Dear Molly, I open this to say that I have made my will; for, if Divine
Providence doesn't befriend me, your poor Jemima will be in paradise
before this reaches you! I have left you my black satin with the bugles,
and my brown bombazine, which, when it is dyed, will be very nice
mourning for common wear. I also bequeath to you the things you 'll find
in the oak press in my own room, and ten silver spoons, and a fish-knife
marked with the McCarthy arms, which, not to be too particular, I have
put down in the will as "plate and linen." I leave you, besides, my book
of "Domestic Cookery," "The Complete Housewife," and the "Way to Glory,"
by St. Francis Xavier. There are marks all through them with my own
pen; and be particular to observe the receipt for snow pancakes, and the
prayers for a "Plenary" after Candlemas.
It will be a comfort to your feelings to know that I am departing from
this life in peace and charity with every one. Tell Mat I forgive him
the fleece he stole out of the hayloft; and though he swears still he
never laid hand on it, who else was there, Molly? You can give Kitty
Hogan the old shoes in the closet, for, though she never wears any, she
'd like to have them for keepsakes! K. I. cared too little for my peace
here to suppose that he will think of my repose hereafter, so that
Father John can take the yearling calf and the two ewes out in masses!
My feelings is overcoming me, Molly, and I can't go on!--breathing my
last, as I am, in a far-away land, and sinking under the cruelty of a
hard-hearted man!
I think it would only be a decent mark of respect to my family if the
M'Carthy arms was hung up over the door, to show I was n't a Dodd. The
crest is an angel sheltering a fox, or a beast like a fox, under his
wing; but you 'll see it on the spoons. When you sell the piggs--maybe I
ought n't to put two g's in them, but my head is wandering--pay old
Judy Cobb two-and-sevenpence for the yarn, and say that I won't stop the
ninepence out of Betty's wages. Maybe, when I 'm gone, they 'll begin to
see what they 've lost, and maybe E. I. will feel it too, when he finds
no buttons on his shirts and the strings out of his waistcoat; and
what's far worse, nobody to contradict him, and control his wilful
nature! That's the very struggle that's killing me now! Nobody knows,
nor would believe, the opposition I 've given him for twenty years. But
_he_ 'll feel it, Molly, and that before I'm six weeks in the grave.
I don't know my age to a day or a month, but you can put me down at
thirty-nine, and maybe the "Blast of Freedom" would say a word or
two about my family. I 'd like that far better than to be "deeply
regretted," or "to the inexpressible grief of her bereaved relations."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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