a-day_, which, at the
existing high price of provisions, was totally inadequate to feed them.
Some of those children were worn to skeletons; their features sharpened
with hunger, and their limbs wasted almost to the bone. Of course, he
says, among so many applicants (one hundred and ten), a great number
were necessarily refused admittance, as there were but thirty vacancies
in the house. Although the guardians exercised the best discrimination
they could, it was believed that some of those rejected were so far
spent, that it was doubtful if they could reach their homes alive--those
homes, such as they were, being in many cases five or six Irish miles
away. This kind-hearted gentleman, having expressed a wish to distribute
bread to those poor creatures, that they might not, as he said, "go
quite empty-handed," forty pounds of bread were procured, all that could
be purchased in the town of Carrick-on-Shannon. They devoured it with a
voracity which nothing but famine could produce. One woman, he says, was
observed to eat but a very small portion of her bread; and being asked
the reason, said she had four children at home, to whom she was taking
it, as without it there would not be a morsel of food in her cabin that
night.
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