Another Pauper Veteran

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXVII, Issue 16, 22 April 1909, Page 609

Another Pauper Veteran

Americans (according to a * Mr. ,Dooley ') kiss their hayroes; Englishmen 'ilivate' their successful generals to the peerage. But too often the fate of the veteran ' ranker ' is like that of Pugsley in A Comedy of Lieutenants — ' two bullets in my head, sir, one in my neck, three months in the Malta hospital, and a penny a day.' Such is the lavish appreciation which a grateful country has bestowed upon a Crimean veteran, one John Hamilton, who answered life's roll-call in the Glenties Workhouse, Donegal County, Ireland, a few weeks ago. ' The old man,' says the Glasgow Observer of March 6, 'had a special horror of a pauper's grave, and a Dungloe gentleman named Anthony O'Donnell provided a private funeral.' So the workhouse funeral cart had not to

' Rattle his bones over the stones ' to the tune of the pauper's drive.

An Ulster Orange brother remarked' some years ago to a Sister of Nazareth at the great Hammersmith Home: • I've little aginst the Pope meself, but I must tell you he doesn't at all bear a good name around Portadown.' For some time, we ween, the British officer will probably bear almost as bad a name around Glenties in ' Ould Donegal.'