Early Matrimony

My young driver talked fluently of America, and said he should go there but for the little gal he had married, who would be lonesome without him.

"The little gal you have married! you are not yet twenty!"

"That I aint, and the gal is but thirteen or fourteen."

"Nonsense, nonsense. What can you do with a wife?"

"And may be I don't know; why, work, and take care of her."

"And how much do you have a day?"

"Sometimes the sixpence, and when I gits a job with the pony, it's a shilling or fifteen pence."

"And with this you expect to support a wife?"

"With the turn that she can git now and then from a lady."

He was a sharp-nosed stinted boy, not in appearance more than sixteen, yet he had as high hopes of aggrandizement as though a candidate for parliament. Enviable content! happy misery!

Ireland’s Welome to the Stranger is one of the best accounts of Irish social conditions, customs, quirks and habits that you could wish for. The author, Mrs Asenath Nicholson, was an American widow who travelled extensively in Ireland on the eve of the Great Famine and meticulously observed the Irish peasantry at work and play, as well as noting their living conditions and diet. The book is also available from Kindle.