" I understood these conditions better after I
spent a night in a typical one-room home in the dockers' quarters near the
Liffey.
Widow Hannan was my hostess. The widow is a strong, black-haired young
woman who took an active part in the rebellion of 1916, and whose husband
was killed fighting under James Connolly. We slept in the first floor
front. In with the widow lay her three children, and in the cot
catty-corner from the bed I was bunked. Just when the night air was
thinning to gray there was a shattering rap on the ground-level window. The
half-dressed young factory daughter clambered over the others and ripped
down the rain coat that served as a night-time window curtain. Against the
square-paned window was hunched a forward-shouldered woman.
As she was being beckoned to the door, I rose, and to do my hair had to
wedge myself in between the breakfast-table and the filmy mirror that hung
among the half-tone pictures of the rebels of 1916. On the iron mantel,
gray with coal dust, there was a family comb.
"God save all here," said the neighbor entering. "Mary, himself's had no
work for four days. Keep the young ones out of the grate for me. I've got
to go out washing."
"My sister-in-law has a husband and seven children to support," said the
widow in explanation to me. "During the war, he could do with her going out
just once in a while--now it's all the time.
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