would try to
do them an injury? She protested they never thought of such a thing; but
she couldn't be brought to say she wished her husband to sign the paper.
It's very odd, indeed."

I couldn't help suspecting that the _materfamilias_ was at the bottom of
it all, and that she was bent upon going out to America to participate
in the prosperity of her two daughters, who were living "like leddies"
at * * in Massachusetts.

The incident recalled to me something which happened years ago when I
was returning with the Storys from Rome to Boston. Our Cunarder, in the
middle of the night, off the Irish coast, ran down and instantly sank a
small schooner.

In a wonderfully short time we had come-to, and a boat's crew had
succeeded in picking up and bringing all the poor people on board. Among
them was a wizened old woman, upon whom all sorts of kind attentions
were naturally lavished by the ship's company. She could not be
persuaded to go into a cabin after she had recovered from the shock and
the fright of the accident, but, comforted and clothed with new and dry
garments, she took refuge under one of the companion-ways, and there,
sitting huddled up, with her arms about her knees, she crooned and
moaned to herself, "I was near being in a wetter and a warmer place; I
was near being in a wetter and a warmer place!" by the half hour
together. We found that the poor old soul had been to Liverpool to see
her son off on a sailing ship as an emigrant to America. So a
subscription was soon made up to send her on our arrival to New York
there to await her son. We had some trouble in making her understand
what was to be done with her, but when she finally got it fairly into
her head, gleams of mingled surprise and delight came over her withered
face, and she finally broke out, "Oh, then, glory be to God! it's a
mercy that I was drownded! glory be to God! and it's the proud boy
Terence will be when he gets out to America to find his poor ould mother
waiting for him there that he left behind him in Liverpool, and quite
the leddy with all this good gold money in her hand, glory be to God!"

On our way back to * * we passed through * * a very neat
prosperous-looking town, which * * tells me is growing up on the heels
of * *. * * * was one of the few places at which the "no rent"
manifesto, issued by Mr. Parnell and his colleagues from their prison in
Kilmainham, during the confinement of Mr. Davitt at Portland, and
without concert wit