Once again my prayers were answered

In spite of my poverty I always had a Christmas tree and the children had their toys.  I would go up town and buy what toys I could but I always had good friends who always remembered my children at Christmas. I would spend a lot of time fixing that tree and then I would sit up all night just to be sure I would be there in the morning when the children came down. I wanted to see the expression on their faces when they came down to the dining room. They would come to the dining room door and stop. Their eyes would flash over to the tree as if they had some doubt that Santa had been. They would see the parcels under the tree and then it was a wild dash. In two minutes paper would be all over the room.

At Easter time I would put a small piece of carpet on the floor leading from the hallways into the dining room. I then put salt on the carpet and made marks in the salt as if a rabbit's paw and made them. There would be a dish of chocolate Easter eggs on the table and I would tell the children that the bunny had brought them and I would show them the rabbits foot marks on the carpet. This worked for a while then Hughie got wise. His curiosity caused him to taste the white substance on the carpet with his finger and that put a crimp in the bunny story. My little fellows were not so dumb. They were not satisfied to be put bed dreaming of Santa Clause, they wanted to see him for themselves. We had a stove pipe hole in floor of their room which was right above the dining room. One Christmas Eve they put their pillows on the floor and stayed there till Santa came.  The next day they said to me, we know who Santa Clause is now daddy. I said, what do you mean? They said we were looking through the hole last night and we saw you putting the parcels under the tree. So that was the end of Santa Clause but still they always looked forward to their toys on Christmas morning and got a lot of enjoyment out of them.

Things were not going well for me, the depression had hit me hard but my children never went short of their food or their Christmas toys.

I forgot to tell you that when I was a boy nine years old, along with the other boys I picked cigarettes butts up off the street.  Men would not give us matches because we were too young, so when we got a copper we bought a box of matches, we could get a big box of matches for halfpenny. That is when I started smoking and been smoking ever since.

I tried to appear cheerful for the sake of my children but I was living a wretched life. I was suffering great pain every minute of every day and I was suffering much anguish of mind through the conduct of your mother. I was greatly worried about my children. 

Some weeks I took in very little money and I found it difficult to feed my family. My life was so miserable that I wished I had died that night in November of 1918 when God gave me back my life. Then I would tell myself that was wrong. If God gave me my life, he must have done it for some purpose. I decided to marry Jessie because I thought her new Catholic faith would help her and I could also help her. I could remind her of the holidays and fast days of the year and remind her to go to Mass on holidays. The sermons she would hear in church. Now she had six lovely children to help her but none of these things seemed to help her.  It was plain to me that she had become a Catholic and crossed the ocean just for one purpose and that was to marry me. Now that she was married she was going to do as she liked. The vows she made to God the day she was married didn't mean anything to her. She vowed to love honor and obey her husband. She never loved me, therefore she could not honor me and she certainly did not obey me. She was selfish because she was ignorant and selfish people can love no one but themselves. Therefore in spite of my prayers I she would never change because she was no more a Catholic then first day I met her. Then I became worried about my health. Would I die and leave my children in the care of their mother who did not know what it meant to be Catholic. She might sent them to any school, even a non-catholic school and they would grow up going to any church or no church at all.