I have often borne testimony to that which I have more often witnessed—the deep, earnest, and steadfast fidelity of the humbler Irish! yet I have never been able to render half justice to the theme. If they be found wanting in all other good or great qualities, they are still true in this—ever faithful, enduring, unwearied, unmoved; past all telling is their fidelity! The woman whose character I am now describing, was but one example of a most numerous class. Well she would have known, if she had given the matter a thought, that no chance or change could ever enable Lucy to repay her services, or recompence her for her sacrifices and cares; yet her devotion was a thousand times more fervent than if it had been purchased by all the bribes that a kingdom’s wealth could yield. By the mere power of her zeal—her earnest and utterly unselfish love—she obtained a hearing from many governors of hospitals; stated the case of “her young lady,” as she called her, the child of a brave man, who had served his country, who died before his time, from the effects of that service; and she, his child, was dying now, from want of proper treatment. In all her statements, Mary set forth everything to create sympathy for Lucy, but, nothing that tended to show her own exertions; how she toiled for her, night and day; how she was pledging, piece by piece, everything she had, to support her; how her wedding-ring was gone from off her finger, and the cherished Waterloo medal of her dead husband (which, by some peculiarly Irish effort of the imagination, she said “was his very picture”) had disappeared from her box. She whispered nothing of all this, though she prayed and petitioned at almost every hospital for medicine and advice. Dismissed from one, Mary would go to another, urging that “sure if they could cure one thing they could cure another, anyhow they might try;” and if she, the beloved of her heart, was raised up from a bed of sickness, “God’s fresh blessing” would be about them, day and night. “They got up hospitals,” she would add, “for the suddenly struck for death; for the lame, and the maimed, and the halt, and the blind; for the vicious! but there were none to comfort those who deserved and needed more than any! She did not want them to take her darling from her. She only asked advice and medicine.” She implored for nothing more. The Irish never seem to feel ashamed of obtaining assistance from any source, except that which the English fly to, as their legitimate refuge—the Parish; and Mary would have imagined she heaped the bitterest wrong upon Lucy, if she had consulted “the parish doctor;” thus, her national prejudice shut her out from the only relief, trifling as it might have been, which she could obtain for the poor girl she so tenderly cherished. [Picture: Chelsea workhouse with blind woman and girl]