AN IRISH ROMANCE.

Western Star, Issue 965, 18 July 1885, Page 2 (Supplement)

AN IRISH ROMANCE.

Shortly after my arrival ‘1 went to the schoolroom to pay my respects to the governess; and there I found, at her studies, besides the two Oameronian boys, a very pretty little girl of 13, whom I supposed to be a visitor or the child of a neighbour taking a casual lesson. She proved to be a beggar who, with her mother, had bogged of Mrs Cameron on Putney Heath some months ago. They were Irish, and Mrs Cameron had got a good account of them from a priest (in Glasgow, I [ think), and had established them in her lodge at Putney Heath, and given them work; and when she came hither she put the mother in the way of getting a living, , and brought the child with her. She is very quick, and excessively fond of reading and learning. . The child, as she grew up, became a parlour-maid. Occasionally she was rather naughty, and revolts of the household and no small difficulties occurred from time to time; but none were suffered to prevail; Mrs Cameron having been seized by a passion for photography, the clever parlour-maid assisted her in it ; and when an exhibition of her photographs was to take place in London, she was sent, under the care of an old housekeeper, to attend and give any information that visitors might require. One day a young gentleman made some inquiry, and, obtaining the information be sought, took away with him, that and something else. For in the course of a year dr two, when he had made sure of a career in the Indian Civil Service by distinguished success in a competitive examination, he proceeded to Freshwater Bay, knocked at Mrs Cameron’s door, ard asked her leave to pay his addresses to her parlour-maid. She inquired whether he had a father and mother) and beingansweredthat he had, she would not allow him to see the girl till she had placed herself in com 1 munication with his parents. The lather had filled high offices in India, and the family was one of some consideration. There were no small difficulties in the way of the alliance, but they were met and surmounted, and the marriage took place with the goodwill of the parents, the girl's mother excepted—for the Irish beggar’s sense of aristocratic proprieties was much offended by this commixture of high and low. 'The marriage has been a happy one, and to one fact I can bear witness—-that, there has not been wanting in the wife the Irish aptitude for taking, with a natural ease and grace, any social position which Providence may think fit to award. The husband has got on well in the service, and has now (in 1878) an office oi £2400 a year. —From The Autobiography of Henry Taylor,