For this reason, I maintain, that when the domestic affections come under the influence of either grief or joy, the peasantry of no nation are capable of feeling so deeply.  Even on the ordinary occasions of death, sorrow, though it alternates with mirth and cheerfulness, in a manner peculiar to themselves, lingers long in the unseen recesses of domestic life:  any hand, therefore, whether by law or violence, that plants a wound here, will suffer to the death.

When my brother and I entered the house, the body had just been put into the coffin and it is usual after this takes place, and before it is nailed down, for the immediate relatives of the family to embrace the deceased, and take their last look and farewell of his remains.  In the present instance, the children were brought over, one by one, to perform that trying and melancholy ceremony.  The first was an infant on the breast, whose little innocent mouth was held down to that of its dead father; the babe smiled upon his still and solemn features, and would have played with his grave-clothes, but that the murmur of unfeigned sorrow, which burst from all present, occasioned it to be removed.  The next was a fine little girl, of three or lour years, who inquired where they were going to bring her daddy, and asked if he would not soon come back to her.

“My daddy’s sleeping a long time,” said the child, “but I’ll waken him till he sings me ‘Peggy Slevin.’  I like my daddy best, bekase I sleep wid him—­and he brings me good things from the fair; he bought me this ribbon,” said she, pointing to a ribbon which he had purchased for her.

The rest of the children were sensible of their loss, and truly it was a distressing scene.  His eldest son and daughter, the former about fourteen, the latter about two years older, lay on the coffin, kissing his lips, and were with difficulty torn away from it.

“Oh!” said the boy, “he is going from us, and night or day we will never see him or hear him more!  Oh! father—­father—­is that the last sight we are ever to see of your face?  Why, father dear, did you die, and leave us forever?—­forever—­wasn’t your heart good to us, and your words kind to us—­Oh! your last smile is smiled—­your last kiss given—­and your last kind word spoken to your children that you loved, and that loved you as we did.  Father, core of my heart, are you gone forever, and your voice departed?  Oh! the murdherers, oh! the murdherers, the murdherers!” he exclaimed, “that killed my father; for only for them, he would be still wid us:  but, by the God that’s over me, if I live, night or day I will not rest, till I have blood for blood; nor do I care who hears it, nor if I was hanged the next minute.”