IRISHMAN'S LUCK

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 2, Issue 302, 16 August 1932, Page 6

IRISHMAN'S LUCK

MONEY FROM HOME CONTRAST IN FORTUNES IN DOSS HOUSE SHELTER. A PATHETIC REQUEST. WELLINGTON, Monday. Until a week or two ago there lived at tbe Church of England men's shelter in Haining 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. Unhappdly it is not always so. 'The ledger of the Wellington City Mission reeords 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 dicussing his past career, probably because it was an ordinary career of ups and downs, of adventure and disappointments such as fall to the lot of many men. It ended in defeat, and one day Michael 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 £100 was to be spent on an outfit in keeping with a first-class ticket, and travelling exP'enses to New York. The balance of ) jhe draft would provide pocket-money. A trans-Atlantic ticket to County Cork awaited him in New York. Michael O'Grady celebrated with his friends at the shelter, the manager of whieh taetfully but firmly estahlished himself as the lucky Trishman'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 knelt 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 an 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 tbe 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 tha institution, always willing to help, always ready to smile. Why he died only doctors know. His former mates say that, behind the 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 Karori Cemetery. Contributions toward other funeral expenses are being made by the men of the shelter, who are placing in a little collectionbox the pennies and threepenny pieces that occasionally come their way.