Everything was for use, nothing
for ornament. Scarce a flower was to be seen in their gardens, and
laughter was a sign of levity, to be sternly repressed.
Their isolation, in the midst of a hostile population, caused them no
concern whatever. They cared for no society or companionship, save that
of their own households, which they ruled with a rod of iron; and an
occasional gathering, for religious purposes, with the other settlers of
their own faith. They regarded the Irish as Papists, doomed to
everlasting perdition, and indeed consigned to that fate all outside
their own narrow sect. Such a people could no more mix with the
surrounding population than oil with water. As a rule, they tilled as
much ground in the immediate vicinity of their houses as they and their
families could manage, and the rest of the land which had fallen into
their possession they let, either for a money payment, or, more often,
for a portion of the crops raised upon it, to such natives as were
willing to hold it on these terms.
The next generation had fallen away somewhat from their fathers'
standards. It is not in human nature to stand such a strain as their
families had been subjected to. There is an innate yearning for joy and
happiness, and even the sternest discipline cannot keep man forever in
the gloomy bonds of fanaticism.
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