When I first
became an inmate with the family, I was too often inclined to laugh at
the oddities of Terry--and I believe a much graver person than I was at
that time would have done the same--but after a time, when I learned
something of his past life, I regarded him with a feeling of pity,
although to avoid laughing at him, at times, were next to impossible.
One evening in midsummer I found him seated alone upon the piazza,
with a most dejected countenance. Taking a seat by his side I enquired
why he looked so sad;--his eyes filled with tears as he replied--"its of
ould Ireland I'm thinkin' to-night, sure." I had never before seen Terry
look sober, and I felt a deep sympathy for the homesick boy. I asked him
how it happened that he left all his friends in Ireland and came to this
country alone. From his reply I learned that his mother died when he was
only ten years old, and, also, that his father soon after married a
second wife, who, to use Terry's own words, "bate him unmarcifully."
"It's a wonder," said he, "that iver I lived to grow up, at all, at all,
wid all the batins I got from that cruel woman, and all the times she
sint me to bed widout iver a bite uv supper, bad luck to her and the
like uv her!" He did live, however, but he certainly did not grow up to
be very tall.
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