e management was bad.

The relief works organised by the Government took the form of draining
and road-making. This entailed delay, owing to the preliminary
surveying, and when employment could be given, the people were too
emaciated and feeble to work. All over Ireland unfinished roads leading
half way to places of no consequence are to-day grass-grown memorials of
that ghastly effort of State assistance.

Almost the earliest of the private soup-kitchens for the relief of the
sufferers was that opened at Dingle under the joint initiative of Lady
Ventry, Mrs. Hickson, my future mother-in-law, and Mrs. Hussey, my
mother. So as not to pauperise the people, subscriptions of one penny a
week were asked from every house in the town. At ten in the morning
those who wanted it could get a pint per head of really excellent soup
for themselves and their families. Those who were known to be able to
pay had to contribute a penny; the really destitute had gratuitous
relief.

So bad was the famine that people coming in from the country fell in the
street never to rise again. One woman was found lying on the outskirts
of the town almost dead from starvation, her three children having
succumbed beside her, and had she not been carried to the soup-kitchen
she would not have survived them many hours.

My wife well remembers another case. One day her mother emerged from a
cabin carrying what looked like a big bundle of clothes. It was the form
of an emaciated woman, whose four children and husband had all starved.
My mother-in-law took her to her own house, fed her at first with
spoonsful of soup, and kept her there until she had rebuilt her once
vigorous constitution.

My wife subsequently recollects her as a hale, buxom, young widow coming
to say good-bye before emigrating to America.

Very soon all the coffins had been exhausted, and in many places the
dead were taken to the graves and dropped in through the hinged bottom
of a trap-coffin.

After soup had been introduced, Indian meal stirabout proved
efficacious, and it was distributed from large iron boilers set up by
the roadside to the gaunt, cadaverous wretches who scuffled for the
sustenance.

Even more terrible than those privations was the fever which supervened.
Apart from the lack of food, a great cause of mortality lay in the
change of diet. Potatoes form a bulky article of food, and stirabout,
unless very carefully made, used to swell after it was consumed. Many,