rica."

"A long way for a lone girl."

"I should not be alone, yere hanner; I should be wid my uncle Tourlough
and his wife."

"Are they going to America?"

"They are, yere hanner; they intends leaving off business and going to
America next spring."

"It will cost money."

"It will, yere hanner; but they have got money, and so have I."

"Is it because business is slack that you are thinking of going to
America?"

"Oh no, yere hanner; we wish to go there in order to get rid of old ways
and habits, amongst which are fortune-telling and buying things of
sarvants, which yere hanner was jist now checking me wid."

"And can't you get rid of them here?"

"We cannot, yere hanner. If we stay here we must go on tramping, and it
is well known that doing them things is part of tramping."

"And what would you do in America?"

"Oh, we could do plenty of things in America--most likely we should buy a
piece of land and settle down."

"How came you to see the wickedness of the tramping life?"

"By hearing a great many sarmons and preachings and having often had the
Bible read to us by holy women who came to our tent."

"Of what religion do you call yourselves now?"

"I don't know, yere hanner; we are clane unsettled about religion. We
were once Catholics and carried Saint Colman of Cloyne about wid us in a
box; but after hearing a sermon at a church about images, we went home,
took the saint out of his box and cast him into a river."

"Oh it will never do to belong to the Popish religion, a religion which
upholds idol-worship and persecutes the Bible--you should belong to the
Church of England."

"Well, perhaps we should, yere hanner, if its ministers were not such
proud violent men. Oh, you little know how they look down upon all poor
people, especially on us tramps. Once my poor aunt, Tourlough's wife,
who has always had stronger conviction than any of us, followed one of
them home after he had been preaching, and begged him to give her God,
and was told by him that she was a thief, and if she didn't take herself
out of the house he would kick her out."

"Perhaps, after all," said I; "you had better join the Methodists--I
should say that their ways would suit you better than those of any other
denomination of Christians."

Yere hanner knows nothing about them, otherwise ye wouldn't talk in that
manner. Their ways would never do for people who want to have done with
lying and staring, and have always kept