One of the five cases was that of Catherine Sheehan, a child two years old.  She had been a strong healthy child, never having complained of any sickness till she began to pine away for want of food.  Her father was employed on the public works, and earned ninepence a day, which was barely enough to purchase food for himself, to enable him to continue at work.  This child had had no food for four days before her death, except a small morsel of bread and seaweed.  She died on the evening of Christmas day.

The case of Richard Finn was another of the five.  He went into a house where they were making oatmeal gruel.  He begged so hard for a little, that the woman of the house took up some of it for him, when it was about half boiled.  The food disagreed with him, and he was able to take only a small portion of it.  He soon got into a fainting state, and was lifted into a car by four men, in order to be carried to the Workhouse.  One of the priests, Rev. Mr. Barry, P.P., was sent for.  He was at the Relief Committee, but left immediately to attend Finn.  In his examination before the coroner, he said he found him in a dying state, but quite in his senses.  He would not delay hearing his confession till he reached the Workhouse, but heard it in the car.  Finn was then removed to the House, and laid on a bed in his clothes, where he received the sacrament of Extreme Unction.  “I feared,” said the Rev. Mr. Barry, “the delay of stripping him.”  And the rev. gentleman was right, for he had scarcely concluded his ministrations when Finn expired.

Every Catholic will understand how severely the physical and mental energies of priests are taxed during times of fever, cholera, small pox, and the like; but all such epidemics combined could scarcely cause them such ceaseless work and sleepless anxiety as the Famine did, more especially in its chief centres.  To those who are not Catholics, I may say that every priest feels bound, under the most solemn obligations, to administer the last sacraments to every individual committed to his care, who has come to the use of reason.  What, then, must their lives have been during the Famine?  Not only had they to attend the dying, but they were expected, and they felt it to be their duty, to be present at Relief Committees, to wait on officials, write letters, and do everything they thought could in any manner aid them in saving the lives of the people.  Their starving flocks looked to them for temporal as well as spiritual help, and, in the Famine, they were continually in crowds about their dwellings, looking for food and consolation.  The priest was often without food for himself, and had not the heart to meet his people when he had nothing to give them.  An instance of this occurred in a severely visited parish of the West.  The priest one day saw before his door a crowd—­hundreds, he thought—­of his parishioners seeking relief.  He had become so prostrate and hopeless at their present sufferings and future prospects, that, taking his