Page:Annalsoffaminein00nich.djvu/178

172 generates, and which should be kept up; and may I never be doomed to die in a poorhouse." Nor is this all. The unreclaimed bogs and waste hunting grounds tell, that in no country are poorhouses such an anomaly as in Ireland; and the Irishman who is willing to work, and is employed there, has no moral right to be either grateful or satisfied that he has exchanged even a mud cabin of liberty for a palace walled and locked, where his food is measured and doled, where his family are strangers to him, and all the social interchanges of life are taken from him wholly. Though a man may be "a man for a' that," yet he cannot feel himself one; nor does he seldom, if ever, regain that standard of manly independence which belongs to man, whatever his future lot may be.

TURNIPS.

As turnips made a prominent feature in the absence of their predecessors, the potatoes, during the famine, they should not be overlooked in the annals of that history. They were to the starving ones supposed to be a "God-send," and were eaten with great avidity, both cooked and raw. Many of the cabiners could get but little fire, and they cooked only the tops, while the bottoms were taken raw; those who had no shelter to cook under could not well eat the tops, though they often tried to do so. It has been ascertained that turnips contain but from ten to fifteen parts of nutriment to a hundred parts, thence the quantity necessary to nourish the body must require bulk to a great amount.