Never!--never!"
Many a trial, too, of another kind, was his patience called upon to
sustain; particularly from the wealthy and the more elevated in
life, when his inexperiences as a mendicant led him to solicit their
assistance.
"Begone, sirrah, off my grounds!" one would say. "Why don't you work,
you sturdy impostor," another would exclaim, "rather than stroll about
so lazily, training your brats to the gallows?"
"You should be taken up, fellow, as a vagrant," a third would observe;
"and if I ever catch you coming up my avenue again, depend upon it, I
will slip my dogs at you and your idle spawn."
Owen, on these occasions, turned away in silence; he did not curse them;
but the pangs of his honest heart went before Him who will, sooner or
later, visit upon the heads of such men their cruel spurning and neglect
of the poor.
"Kathleen," he observed to his wife, one day, about a, year or more
after they had begun to beg; "Kathleen, I have been turnin' it in my
mind, that some of these childhre might sthrive to earn their bit an'
sup, an' their little coverin' of clo'es, poor things. We might put them
to herd cows in the summer, an' the girshas to somethin' else in the
farmers' house. What do you think, asthore?"
"For God's sake do, Owen; sure my heart's crushed to see them--my own
childhre, that I could lay down my life for--beggin' from door to door.
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