April 17, 1916

From: May Gleasure, The Square, Listowel, Co Kerry, Ire.
To: Frank Gleasure, 36 Litchfield St., Brighton, Mass, U.S.A.

My dear Frank,

I received you ever welcomed letter the week before last and was very glad at hearing from you once again I hope your wife and the baby are quite well by this time, we are all about the same as usual here. The weather here at present is not very good it has being bitterly cold since the 1st April although we had not a very bad winter this year. I'm sure you'll be very much surprised when you hear about Mrs Morris, well Frank she was the most evil-minded good for nothing person that I ever came across to put it in one word for you we had to kick her out of the house, and we're in this house a long time now and its the first time we ever had to do it to anybody. It happened on a Sunday evening the boss was out walking and Annie and I were inside with her, when all of a sudden she turned round and commenced to insult us about father and his former days we stood up for him and then she turned round on Annie and said the most horrible and cruel things about her that I ever heard said to anyone before, we ordered her out of the house and she wouldn't go for us so when the boss came in we told him he'd have to order her out that it would be either us or her inside so he told her go and she had the cheek to ask George to carry her valise up town for her but indeed we would not let him be a servant to her she was just too months staying with us at the time she left she was a week then staying up town and then she went to Dublin to her sister and we did not see or hear from her since and indeed we'd be better of if we never saw her for she told us things that I would rather never have heard and I'm very glad that anyone around here don't know what she told us. The trouble did not end there while she was here she told the boss that I told her I was going to join the catholic church and to marry a catholic fellow I was going with well if he had asked me about it while she was here I would have being able to contradict her because I never told her any such thing but instead of that he keeps it in until last week and then charges me with it and told me I was a disgrace and that he'd kick me out with out a penny do you think that anyone would put up with that. It may be the case that I may marry a catholic boy, there's one thing certain that I'll marry whom I like I don't care whom it pleases or don't. It would be far better for Annie and I to be out earning our wages for we'd have something by our time and would be independent of everybody. I don't think there are any other two girls in the country would put up with what we have to not having even a sixpence or shilling that we can call our own only whatever I chance to get in the shop myself and that's very little. Annie wants to go to America and she says she won't stop here another winter if she can help it. I want you to advise us what is best to do and will you write it on a separate sheet of paper so he would not see it when he reads the letter and don't say anything about what I've told you here except on the separate sheet I may tell you our time is not a bed of roses and I don't want to stay here much longer. I hope that before many years will pass by that we shall all be together over there again a place where we had a right to be left the first day. and it was true for you that it changed the whole course of our lives. I hope you'll write to me soon again and Hoping your wife little baby and self are all quite well Iremain
Your loving sister
Mai