She had, she
said, a little place in the chimney to sleep in, and when they had too
large a fire, she went out of doors. Such being the standard of ordinary
living, one can compute the terrors of the famine which has since
occurred in Fayal, and which has only been relieved through the
contributions levied in this country, and the energy of Mr. Dabney.
Steeped in this utter poverty,--dwelling in low, dark, smoky huts, with
earthen floors,--it is yet wonderful to see how these people preserve
not merely the decencies, but even the amenities of life. Their clothes
are a chaos of patches, but one sees no rags; all their well-worn white
garments are white in the superlative degree; and when their scanty
supply of water is at the scantiest, every bare foot on the island is
sure to be washed in warm water at night. Certainly there are fleas
and there are filthinesses in some directions; and yet it is amazing,
especially for one accustomed to the Irish, to see an extreme of poverty
so much greater, with such an utter absence of squalidness. But when all
this is said and done, the position of the people of Fayal is an abject
one, that is, it is a _European_ position; it teaches more of history
in a day to an untravelled American than all his studies had told
him besides,--and he returns home ready to acquiesce in a thousand
dissatisfactions, in view of that most wondrous of all recorded social
changes, the transformation of the European peasant into the American
citizen.
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