The sermon needed no translation for the men of many nations who were present.  Irishmen and Englishmen, Highlanders and Belgians, French and Germans, Mexicans and Canadians, could interpret the meaning of the flashing eye which roamed to every corner of the church, singling out each miserable sinner; the fierce frown, the threatening gesture, the finger first pointing to the heaven above, and then down to the depths of hell.

Some stayed to pray and to confess their sins; others hardened their hearts and went home unrepentant.  Michael Mangan went to Belz’s grocery near the canal.  He said he felt pains in his interior, and drank a jigger of whisky.  Then he bought half-a-gallon of the same remedy to take home with him.  It was a cheap prescription, costing only twelve and a half cents, but it proved very effective.  Old Belz put the stuff into an earthenware bottle, which he corked with a corncob.  Michael started for home by the zigzag path which led up the steep limestone bluff, but his steps were slow and unsteady; he sat down on a rock, and took another dose out of his bottle.  He never went any further of his own motion, and we buried him next day.  We were of different opinions about the cause of his death; some thought it was the cholera, others the pangs of conscience, some the whisky, and others a mixture of all three; at any rate, he died without speaking to the priest.

Next day another neighbour died, Mr. Harrigan.  He had lost one arm, but with the other he wrote a good hand, and registered deeds in the County Court.  I called to see him.  He was in bed lying on his back, his one arm outside the coverlet, his heaving chest was bare, and his face was ghastly pale.  There were six men in the room, one of whom said: 

“Do you know me, Mr. Harrigan?”

“Sure, divil a dog in Lockport but knows you, Barney,” said the dying man.

Barney lived in Lockport, and in an audible whisper said to us:  “Ain’t he getting on finely?  He’ll be all right again to-morrow, please God.”

“And didn’t the doctor say I’d be dead before twelve this day?” asked Harrigan.

I looked at the clock on the mantelshelf.  It was past ten.  He died an hour later.

One day the young man from Vermont rose from his seat and looked at me across the schoolroom.  I thought he was going to say something.  He took down his hat, went to the door, turned and looked at me again, but he did not speak or make any sign.  Next morning his place was vacant, and I asked one of the boys if he had seen the young man.  The boy said: 

“He ain’t a-coming to school no more, I calkilate.  He was buried this morning before school hours.”

That year, ’49 was a dismal year in Joliet.

Mr. Rogers, one of the school managers, came and sat on a bench near the door.  He was a New Englander, a carpenter, round-shouldered, tall and bony.  He said: