The Black Prophet: A Tale Of Irish Famine

one of great gain and advantage, and who contrive, by exercising the most heartless and diabolical principles, to make the sickness, famine, and ge

ear, or a dear summer, when they sell it out at an enormous or usurious prices, and who, at all times, and under all circum

ch at a first glance has the appearance of that rare virtue in our country, called frugality-a virtue which, upon a closer

ruth, who felt a most Christian sympathy with the distresses of the poor. In his house, and about it, there was much, no doubt, to be commended, for there was much to mark the habits of the saving man. Everything was neat and clean, not so much from any innate love of neatness and cleanliness, as because these qualities were economical in themselves. His ploughs and farming implements were all snugly laid up, and covered, lest they might be injured by exposure to the weather; and his house was filled with large chests and wooden hogsheads, trampled hard with oatmeal, which, as they were nev

eal-monger lived under the jurisdiction of that civic gentleman. He was seldom known to use metal weights when disposing of his property; in lieu of these he always used

to the eye of men, he was proverbially strict and scrupulous in the observation of its sanctions, but outrageously severe and unsparing upon all who appeared to be influenced either by a negligent or worldly spirit, or who omitted the least tittle of its forms. Reli

at once recognized by our readers as that of the roguish hypocrite, whose rapacity is the standing cur

ase from him; and in order to give them a favorable impression of his piety, and consequently of his justice, he had placed against the wall a delf crucifix, with a semi-circular receptacle at the bottom of it for holding holy water This was as much as to say "how could I cheat you, with the image of our Blessed Redeemer before

ld read in each other's faces too truly the gloom and anguish that darkened the brow and wrung the heart. The strong man, who had been not long-before a comfortable farmer, now stood dejected and apparently broken down, shorn of his strength, without a trace of either hope or spirit; so wofully shrunk away too, from his superfluous apparel, that the spectators actually wondered to think that this was the large man, of such powerful frame, whose feats of strength had so often heretofore filled them with amazement. But, alas! what will not sickness and hunger do? There too was the aged man-the grand-sire himself-bent with a double weight of years and sorr

his poor children's want and sickness-in their moanings by day and their cries for her by night, they have not the soft affection of her voice nor the tender touch of her hand to soothe their pain-nor has he that smile, which was ever his, to solace him now, nor that faithful heart to soothe him with its affection,

s manly love as a husband-his tenderness as a parent-his protecting hand and ever kind heart, crush her solitary spirit by their memory, and drag it down to the utmost depths of affliction. Oh! bitter reflection!-"if her Owen wore now alive, and in health, she would not be here; but God took him to Him

heerfulness that was put on to baffle suspicion. Sometimes he laughed as if his heart were light, and again expressed a kind of condescending sympathy with some poor person or other, to whom he spoke kindly, as a man would do who knew nothing personally of the distress which he saw about him, but who wishe

and dejectedly, wasted, feeble, and sickly-sometimes in small groups of twos and threes, and sometimes a solitary individual might be seen hastening with earnest but lang