IRISHMAN’S LUCK

Dominion, Volume 25, Issue 272, 12 August 1932, Page 10

IRISHMAN’S LUCK

From Poverty to Plenty EX-SHELTER INMATE A Contrast in Fortunes Until a week or two ago there lived at the Church of England men’s shelter in Ilaining Street an Irishman named Michael O’Grady. To-day Michael O’Grady is on his way back to Ireland, travelling first class in a crack liner. Thus has the proverbial luck of the Irish held good. Unhappily it is not always so. The ledger of the Wellington City Mission records the name of another Irishman from whom fortune withheld her smiles'. Only his last wish was granted, and that wish was pathetically small.. The story of Michael O’Grady begins in County Cork, where he and his sister were born and spent their childhood. When they parted Michael set out for New Zealand and his sister journeyed to New York. Here there is a gap in the story that can be bridged only in imagination. Michael O’Grady was not given to discussing his past career, probably because it was an ordinary career of ups and downs, of adventures and dis-

appointments such as fall to the lot of many men. It ended in defeat, and one day Michael O'Grady arrived at the men's shelter down and out, and there he stayed for a year. A Letter From New York. One day last month there arrived in Wellington a letter addressed to Michael O’Grady. It contained a draft for £137 and a first class ticket‘for the liner Mariposa. The sister had learned of her brother’s plight. She wrote explaining that £lOO was to be spent on an outfit In keeping with a first class ticket, and travelling expenses to New York. The balance of the draft would provide pocket-money. A transAtlantic ticket to County Cork awaited him in New York. Michael O’Grady celebrated with his friends at the shelter, the manager of which tactfully but firmly established himself as the lucky Irishman’s banker. New clothes were bought and new suitcases packed. When the time of departure came Michael O’Grady, who had come to the shelter in rags, left in a taxi.- Before he said good-bye he paid what he owed, and more. Then, while the taxi waited, he ktielt in the courtyard and asked a blessing for the Mission and those in it. The taxi door closed on Michael O’Grady and his journey to County Cork began. Early Morning Summons. The story of the other Irishman— Paddy was his name—begins at the end. At two o’clock one morning the manager of the Mission .shelter, Mr. J. Gibbons, received ah urgent call to the Wellington Public Hospital. He hurried there and approached the bedside of a dying boy, who beckoned to him and spoke in a whisper. Paddy had a last request to make.' He asked that his burial should not be the burial of a pauper. Would the Mission, which had cared for him, arrange for his funeral? The promise was given—and fulfilled. An Australian by birth, Paddy had lived in the shelter for six months. He was the cheery “hard case” of the institution, always willing to help, always ready to smile. Why he died only doctors know. His former mates say that, behind his smile, he worried about his future, worried himself into despondency and illness. Paddy was carried to his grave by pall-bearers from the shelter. A Wellington taxi company arranged free transport for the mourners, and the Hospital Board provided a plot in the Karor! Cemetery. Contributions toward other funeral expenses are being made by the men of the shelter, who are placing in a little collecting-box the pennies and threepenny pieces that occasionally come their way.