HISTORY OF THE MACOUN FAMILY 11 



ever, whose brother had gone to America some years before, beg- 

 ged us to go to America instead of Australia, and by doing so we 

 missed being in Australia when the gold fever broke out in 1850. 



I might say something about the Irish Famine in 1848, but 

 could hardly add anything to what nearly everyone knows already. 

 I remember, however, that our potatoes were not larger than 

 marbles and that the whole of the potato crop, upon which the 

 people of Ireland depended, was practically destroyed in 1847 and 

 starvation brought upon many thousands of the people. Often 

 we would come across men and women lying by the road-side 

 unable to walk, where they were dying either of fever or starvation. 

 We had to pay, that year, 16 shillings on the pound taxes for Poor 

 Houses and not one of the people of the vicinity was in them. 

 They were filled by strangers that had been picked up dying by 

 the road-side. At the time of Dan O'Connell's death in 1846, I 

 was a clerk in a store on North Street, Belfast and recall that at 

 that time the bell was tolled night and day for a month. 



One other event should be related. My grandfather had 

 built a church for the Roman Catholics and given a lease for fifty 

 years. We received the rents and one day Father Matthew, the 

 great Irish temperance leader was at the chapel when our rent 

 was due, and came to our house with the clerk who was paying 

 it and had a talk with my mother and put his hand on my head 

 and blessed me and hoped I would grow up a good temperance 

 man, which I am happy to say I did. 



Before leaving my youth and Ireland, I may, in this place, 

 mention some of the characteristics that I had as a boy and as I 

 write this down, after seventy years, I find that I haven't changed 

 much. My strongest characteristic was moral courage. I often 

 took a whipping stoically when a weaker boy bawled so loudly 

 that listeners would say he was being killed. I, without a mur- 

 mur, received what I got and often two whippings upon my 

 shoulders by telling what we called a "white lie," to enable some 

 weak boy to escape it. I remember one happening at school that 

 I think worthy of recording. The teacher was very strong on 

 spelling and usually gave us forty or fifty words to learn, which 

 we did each day. I never remember studying this lesson as, 



