band and the caresses of children to keep the roof over the head of father or of mother, and provide for their comfort in the winter of their days; or to pay for the support of a young brother or sister, or perhaps the orphan child of a sister who had confided it to her care with her dying breath. I have many times, and always with instinctive reverence, seen such noble Irish women in the act of sending the fortieth or the fiftieth remittance to their relatives in Ireland; and the cool matter-of-fact deliberateness with which the money was deposited, and the order obtained, was an eloquent proof of the frequency of their visits for the same purpose.
The great ambition of the Irish girl is to send 'something' to her people as soon as possible after she has landed in America; and in innumerable instances the first tidings of her arrival in the New World are accompanied with a remittance, the fruits of her first earnings in her first place. Loving a bit of finery dearly, she will resolutely shut her eyes to the attractions of some enticing article of dress, to prove to the loved ones at home that she has not forgotten them; and she will risk the danger of insufficient clothing, or boots not proof against rain or snow, rather than diminish the amount of the little hoard to which she is weekly adding, and which she intends as a delightful surprise to parents who possibly did not altogether approve of her hazardous enterprise. To send money to her people, she will deny herself innocent enjoyments, womanly indulgences, and the gratifications of legitimate vanity; and such is the generous and affectionate nature of these young girls, that they regard the sacrifices they make as the most ordinary matter in the world, for which they merit neither praise nor approval. To assist their relatives, whether parents, or brothers and sisters, is with them a matter of imperative duty, which they do not and cannot think of disobeying, and which, on the contrary, they delight in performing. And the
