Fairies and Folk of Ireland | Page 9

pick up all of it I could carry, and wouldn't I
take land wid it and pay rent and buy stock for a big farm and grow as
rich as Damer? What good would goold be? Ha! Ha! What couldn't you
do in a country where ye could be pickin' up goold in the street?"
"There's no gold to be picked up in the streets there, any more than
here," said the old woman, "and if there was, it would be no use to you.
Only suppose, now, that you had picked up all the gold you could carry,

and that you wanted to buy a loaf of bread with it. And suppose you
went into a baker's shop and chose even the smallest loaf of bread you
could find, and threw down a whole gold sovereign for it--aye, or a
hundred gold sovereigns. Would the baker sell you the bread for your
gold, do you think? Wouldn't he say to you: 'Go on out of this, for the
silly Irishman that you are! What for would I be giving you good bread
for that gold of yours, when I can pick up as much and as good as that
any minute here before my own door and keep my bread as well?' If
you could find gold in the street, it would be worth no more than the
stones that you find there."
"I don't know how that is, Mrs. O'Brien," said Peter, "but I can't see
why goold wouldn't be goold, wherever you could find it."
"It's not sensible," said John, "to be talkin' of findin' gold in the streets,
but there's a deal in what Peter says, for all that, and it's often I've
thought, too, that I'ld go to the States and be away from all these
throubles, if only we could save up the money to take us all there. It's
not any gold or any riches I'm thinkin' about, but what I want to know,
mother, is this: Could a man in the States, if he was strong and if he
worked hard--and if he didn't drink a great deal--could he make enough
to keep himself and his wife both, so that she needn't work too
hard--not so that she would sit idle, I don't mean, but so that she needn't
be doin' hard work and doin' it all the time--could he do that?"
"That's the sensible and the honest talk," said his mother; "he could do
that. Those that do nothing get nothing, in the States the same as
anywhere else. But I've talked with them that know, and they tell me
that in the States those that will work are paid for their work, and those
that are strong and industrious and honest can keep their families from
want, and that's more than some can do here, God help them!"
"It would be a great thing," said John, speaking slowly, as if he were
trying to make himself believe this dream of a land where a man's work
could make his wife and his children sure of a home and food--"a great
thing. And do you think, mother--but no, no--I suppose not--do you
think, if we was once there--do you think that I could work enough to
make it so that it would be easier for you and for Kitty both? Could one

do enough for three?"
"It would be easier than here, maybe," was all that the old woman said
in answer to this. She had heard this talk of America many times before,
and she did not like it. She would rather believe, and make others
believe, that better times were coming for Ireland. She was not so
young as the others and not so ready to leave her old home, yet lately
she had seen how it was growing harder and harder to stay, and there
seemed to be little left of the good luck of which she boasted.
She was thinking of all this now, and John knew her thoughts, though
she did not speak them, and he said: "You always tell us that there's
betther times comin', mother, and I've learned to know that all you say
is true. She was sayin' it just before you came in, Pether. But how can
we believe in the betther times? They don't come. They get worse and
worse. How do we know they'll ever come?"
Again Mrs. O'Brien seemed lost in deep thought, or in a dream, just as
when, a little while before, she had told them of O'Donoghue. What she
told them now was a sort of answer to John's question, but perhaps she
told it quite as much to draw their thoughts away from America. She
was silent for a little while, and they all waited for her