to happiness. I had then lost my father, and sister, and brother,--have
since lost another sister and my mother;--but I have never as yet
lost a wife or a child.

When I told my friends that I was going on this mission to Ireland
they shook their heads, but said nothing to dissuade me. I think
it must have been evident to all who were my friends that my life
in London was not a success. My mother and elder brother were
at this time abroad, and were not consulted;--did not even know
my intention in time to protest against it. Indeed, I consulted
no one, except a dear old cousin, our family lawyer, from whom I
borrowed (pounds)200 to help me out of England. He lent me the money, and
looked upon me with pitying eyes--shaking his head. "After all,
you were right to go," he said to me when I paid him the money a
few years afterwards.

But nobody then thought I was right to go. To become clerk to
an Irish surveyor, in Connaught, with a salary of (pounds)100 a year, at
twenty-six years of age! I did not think it right even myself,--except
that anything was right which would take me away from the General
Post Office and from London.

My ideas of the duties I was to perform were very vague, as were
also my ideas of Ireland generally. Hitherto I had passed my time,
seated at a desk, either writing letters myself, or copying into
books those which others had written. I had never been called upon
to do anything I was unable or unfitted to do. I now understood that
in Ireland I was to be a deputy-inspector of country post offices,
and that among other things to be inspected would be the postmasters'
accounts! But as no other person asked a question as to my fitness