Just Irish
Date: 2012-08-09T00:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Ireland -- Description and travel; Irish wit and humor

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Title: Just Irish

Author: Charles Battell Loomis

Release date: August 9, 2012 [eBook #40465]
Most recently updated: October 23, 2024

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK JUST IRISH ***

JUST IRISH
CHARLES BATTELL LOOMIS

Lismore Castle

JUST IRISH

CHARLES BATTELL LOOMIS

Author of "Cheerful Americans," "A Bath in an
English Tub," "A Holiday Touch,"
"The Knack of It," "Little
Maude's Mamma,"
Etc., Etc.,

With many illustrations from photographs by the Author.

BOSTON
RICHARD G. BADGER
THE GORHAM PRESS
1911

Copyright 1909 and 1910 by Richard G. Badger
All rights reserved

The Gorham Press, Boston

Dedicated
to
my first friends
in
Ireland,
the Todds of 'Derry

PREFACE

THE first edition of this book was printed before I had thought to write a preface.

Now, my readers may not care for a preface, but as a writer I do not feel that a book is completed until the author has said a word or two.

You don't hand a man a glass of wine or even an innocuous apple in silence: you say, "Here's looking at you," or, "Have an apple?" and the recipient says, "Thanks, I don't care if I do," or, "Thanks, I don't eat apples." In either case you have done what you expected of yourself, and that, let me tell you, is no small satisfaction.

So now that my publisher has thought it worth while to get out an illustrated edition of this unpretentious record of pleasant (though rainy) days in Ireland, it is my pleasure to say to all who may be about to pick it up, "Don't be afraid of it—it won't hurt you. It was written by a Protestant, but while he was in Ireland his only thought was that God was good to give him such a pleasant time and to make people so well disposed toward him. It was written by a man without a drop of Irish blood in his veins (as far as he knows), but he felt that he was among his brothers in race, because their ideas so chimed in with his, and every one made him so comfortable."

This is a good opportunity to thank those of Irish birth or extraction who in their papers and magazines said such nice things about the book.

The pictures, all snap shots, were taken by me, and even the Irish atmosphere was friendly to my purpose, and gave me considerable success. A pleasanter five weeks of travel I never had, and if you who read this have never visited Ireland, don't get too old before doing so. And if you do visit it give yourself up to it, and you'll have a good time.

Here's the book—like it if you can, drop it if you don't. Never waste time over a book that is not meant for you.

Charles Battell Loomis.

ILLUSTRATIONS

Lismore Castle | Frontispiece
A Real Irish Bull | 16
Government Cottage, Rent a Shilling a Week | 20
Horses in County Kerry | 26
To the Men of '98 | 30
Prosperity in Limerick | 34
Mackerel Seller, Bundoran, Donegal | 38
In Donegal | 42
The Bungalow of Seumas McManus | 50
A Sky Line at Bundoran | 52
The Rocks at Bundoran on the West Coast | 56
Geese in Galway | 64
Dublin Bay | 74
A Dublin Ice Cart | 78
O'Connell's Monument, Dublin | 82
On the Road to Lismore, in a Rain Storm | 86
Milk Wagon, Mallow | 92
Green Coat Hospital, Cork | 102
A Bit of Killarney | 106
Street in Youghal | 114
Thatched Cottage, Wicklow | 124
Wicklow Peasants | 132
Lost in his Lunch, Mallow, County Kerry | 140
A Side Street, Wexford | 150
Picturesque Galway | 156
A String of Fishermen, Galway | 160
Waiting for the Circus, Galway | 164
Gaelic Sign, Donegal | 170
Gone to America | 174

TABLE OF CONTENTS

I. | A Taste of Irish Hospitality | 15
II. | Around about Lough Swilly | 27
III. | A Joyful Day in Donegal | 41
IV. | The Dull Gray Skies of Ireland | 52
V. | The Joys of Third-Class Travel | 62
VI. | A Few Irish Stories | 74
VII. | Snapping and Tipping | 83
VIII. | Random Remarks on Things Corkonian | 97
IX. | A Visit to Mount Mellaray | 108
X. | A Dinner I Didn't Have | 123
XI. | What Ireland Wants | 134
XII. | A Hunt for Irish Fairies | 143
XIII. | In Galway with a Camera | 156
XIV. | The New Life in Ireland | 167

JUST IRISH

CHAPTER I

A Taste of Irish Hospitality

"IRISH hospitality." I have often heard the term used, but I did not suppose that I should get such convincing evidence of it within twelve hours of my arrival at this northern port.

This is to be a straightforward relation of what happened to some half dozen Americans, strangers to each other, a week ago, and strangers to all Ireland upon arrival.

In details it is somewhat unusual, but in spirit I am sure it is characteristic of what might have befallen good Americans in any one of the four provinces.

To be dumped into the tender that came down the Foyle to meet the Caledonia at Moville at the chilly hour of two in the morning seemed at the time a hardship. We had wanted to see the green hills of old Ireland and here were blackness and bleakness and crowded humanity.

But the loading process was long drawn out, and when at last we began our ascent of the Foyle there were indubitable symptoms of morning in the eastern skies, and we saw that our entrance into the tender was like the entrance of early ones into a theater before the lights are turned up. After a while the curtain is lifted and the scenic glories are revealed to eyes that have developed a proper amount of eagerness and receptivity.

With the first steps of day a young Irishman returning to his native land mounted a seat and recited an apostrophe, "The top of the mornin' to ye," and then a mist lifting suddenly, Ireland, dewily green and soft and fair, lay revealed before our appreciative eyes.

A Real Irish Bull

The sun, when he really began his morning brushwork, painted the trees and grasses in more vivid greens, but there was a suggestiveness of early spring in the first soft tones that was fully valued by eyes that had been used to leaden skies for more than half the days of the voyage.

But I am no poet to paint landscapes on paper, so we will consider ourselves landed at Londonderry and furnished with a few hours of necessary sleep, and anxious to begin our adventures.

Our party consisted of a half dozen whose itineraries were to run in parallels for a time. There were four ladies and two of us were men. One of the men had to come to Ireland on business, and he found he had awaiting him an invitation to lunch that day with a country gentleman with whom he had corresponded on business matters.

As the one least strange to the country this American had tendered his good offices, American fashion, to the ladies who would be traveling without male companions after we left them, and so he dispatched a messenger with a note to the effect that he must regretfully decline, and stating his reasons for so doing.

While we were lunching at the hotel a return note came to him, this time from the good man's wife, cordially asking that we all come and have afternoon tea.

Here was a chance to see an Irish household that was hailed with delight by all, a delight that was not unappreciative of the warmth of the invitation.

We would go to the pleasant country house, but—our trunks had not come. Would our traveler's togs worthily represent our country?

But our friend said, "Don't let clothes stand between us and this thing. I'm sure this lady will be glad to welcome us as Americans, and for my part I never reflect credit on my tailor, and people never clamor for his address when they see me. As for you ladies, I'd think any tea of mine honored by such fetching gowns, if that's the proper term. I'm going to write her that we're coming just as we are."

So he sent another messenger out into the country—telephones seem as scarce as snakes here—saying, well, he used a good assortment of words and arranged them worthily.

The two young girls of the party clamored for jaunting cars, and so two were ordered for four o'clock. One of them had red cushions and was as glittering in its glass and gold as a circus wagon.

My friend, on ordering this one, said to the "jarvey" (by the way, they call them drivers here in this part of Ireland, but jarvey has always seemed so delightfully Irish that I prefer to stick to it), "Get another car as nice as this."

"Sure, there's none as nice as this," said he, pride forcing the confession, "but I'll get a good one."

It was a beautiful day except for the extreme heat—and yet they say it always rains in Ireland. I felt that it must be exceptional, and said to the waiter at lunch, "I suppose it's unusual to have such weather as this?" "Sure, every day is like this," said he with patriotic mendacity.

When the jaunty jaunting cars drew up a little before four o'clock there were portentous black clouds in the sky, but the jarvies assured us that they were there more for looks than anything else—that there might be a matter of a spit or two, but that we'd have a fine afternoon.

So we mounted the sides of the cars, and holding on to the polished rails, as we had been told was the proper fashion, we set out bravely on our way, little wotting what a wetting all Ireland was soon to have.

In a half hour or so we would be walking over Irish lawns and admiring Irish laces as they decked the forms of gaily clad femininity gathered for sociability and tea alongside the rhododendrons and fuchsia bushes.

Government Cottage, rent a shilling a week

A few drops of rain fell, but the wind was south and we seemed to be going east.

"Isn't this gay?" called the young girls, as we jiggled along in holiday mood. Suddenly a silver bolt of jagged lightning cleft the sky to the south, and almost instantaneously a peal of thunder that sounded as if it had been born and bred on Connecticut hills, so loud was it, told us that the people living to the south of us were going to get wet.

And then we came to a bend in the road and turned south.

"Ah, 'twill be nothin'," said our driver, in answer to a question.

To give up what one has undertaken is a poor way of playing a game and we were all for going on. "It's not so far," said the jarvey, but this was a sort of truth that depended on what he was comparing the distance with. It was not so far as Dublin, for instance, but 'twas far enough as the event proved.

We put on our cravenettes, hoisted what umbrellas we had, and gave the blankets an extra tucking in and after that—the deluge!

Bang, kerrassh! A bolt from heaven followed by a bolt from each horse. A sort of echo as it were. The drivers reined them in and ours started to seek shelter under a tree.

As I sometimes read the newspapers when at home I told our driver to keep in the open.

The lightning now became more and more frequent and was so close that we let go our hold on the brass rails, preferring to pitch out rather than act as conductor on a jaunting car—such things as conductors being unknown anyway.

It was terrifying, and to add to my discomfort I found I was sitting in a pool of water, the rain having an Irish insinuatingness about it that was irresistible. And now, just to show us what could be gotten up on short notice for American visitors, it began to hail and the wind blew it in long, white, slanting, winter-like lines across the air and into our faces, and the roads having become little brooks, the horses had to be urged to the driver's utmost of threats and cajolery.

I thought of that waiter who had told me it was always sunny in Ireland and I wished him out in the pelting storm.

"I've not seen the like in twinty yairs, sirr," said the driver.

To go back was to get the storm in fuller fury, for the wind had shifted. To go ahead was to arrive like drowned rats, but we were anxious for shelter, and still the driver said, "It's not far," and so we went on. I have been in many places in all sorts of weathers, but it is years since I've been out in such a storm. The hailstones were not as large as hen's eggs, but they were as large as French peas.

There was not a dry stitch on us and the red of the gay cushion went through to my skin. My cravenette treacherously refused to let the water depart from me, but shed it on the wrong side—which may be an Irish bull, for all I know.

"Here we are now, sirr," said our driver, as he turned in at a beautiful driveway. A winding drive of a minute or two and we arrived like wet hens—all of us—at the house of these people who had never heard of us until that day.

But the warmth of the welcome from our host and hostess who came out to the door to greet us made us not only glad we had come, but even glad we were wet.

Had there been the least stiffness we should have wished the storm far enough (and indeed all Ireland did wish it, for it turned out to be the most tremendous thunder and hailstorm in a score or more of years), but our new found friends frankly laughed with us at our funny appearance, and we were hurried off to various rooms to change our clothes.

Our protestations of regret at putting them to trouble were met with protestations of delight at being able to serve us, and as my host brought me some union garments that had been made for a man of three times my size and I wrapped them round and round me until they were giddy, I was glad I had not turned back to spend a damp afternoon in a lonely hotel.

The rest of the party fared well in getting clothes that became them, but when I was fully dressed I looked like Francis Wilson in Erminie. As I turned up my sleeves and triple turned up my trousers I knew I would be good for a laugh in any theater in Christendom.

There was but one thing to do—go down and look unconscious of my misfit appearance. It would never do to stay in my room through a mistaken sense of personal dignity.

So I went down, and meeting host and hostess and my compatriots, a laugh went up that would have broken the ice in a Pittsburgh millionaire's drawing room.

And then we were taken to the tearoom and in a few minutes I forgot that I was no longer the glass of fashion and the mold of form, for I was made to feel that I was just a friend who had dropped in (or, perhaps, dripped in would be better), and when a couple of hours later we drove home through the soft Irish verdure, doubly green after its rough but invigorating bath, we all felt that Irish hospitality was no mere traveler's tale, but a thing that had intensity and not a little emotion in it.

Horses in County Kerry

CHAPTER II

Around about Lough Swilly

TO a tired New Yorker who has sixteen days at his disposal I would recommend a day on Lough Swilly at Rathmullan. It is separated from the island of Manhattan by little else than the Atlantic, and every one knows that a sea voyage is good for a wearied man.

Take a boat for Londonderry from the foot of Twenty-fourth Street, and then for the mere cost of a shilling (if you travel third class, and that is the way to fall in with characters) you will be railroaded and ferried to Rathmullan, where you'll find as clean an inn and as faithful service as heart could wish. And such scenery!

And every one will be glad to see you, because you are from America. ("Welcome from the other side," and a hearty hand grip from leathery hands.)

Of course a day is a short time in which to get the full benefit of the peaceful atmosphere of the place and perhaps you will stay on as we are doing for several days.

Then you can return for a shilling to 'Derry, take Saturday's steamer to the foot of Twenty-fourth Street, New York, and you'll soon be walking the streets of the metropolis filled with pleasant memories of one of nature's beauty spots.

Lough Swilly is an arm of the Atlantic and its waters are salt. At Rathmullan the lough is surrounded by lofty green hills, mostly treeless, gently sloping to the water, and for the better part of the time softened in tone by an Indian summer haze indescribably beautiful.

We came down according to the program I have outlined, and traveled third class for the reason I have stated, but as the only other occupant of the coach was a lone "widow woman" we were unable to get any characteristic conversation. In fact, up here in Donegal, as far as I have observed, the natives talk more like the Scotch than they do like the Irish made known to us by certain actors. When I get south I expect to hear rich brogues, but here the burr is Scotch.

We were ferried from Fahan in a side-wheel steamer, and soon the painfully neat-looking white houses of Rathmullan lay before us and we disembarked, and carrying our own grips unmolested (a sure sign of an unusual place) we made our way up the stone pier between restless steers who were waiting for us to get out of the way so that they could go to the slaughter house. There had been a cattle fair that day in Rathmullan.

We knew little of the town save what Stephen Gwynn says of it in his delightful "Highways and Byways in Donegal and Antrim."

There is a most picturesque and ivy-grown ruin of an abbey dating back to the fifteenth century. It is much more beautiful than Kenilworth.

We bent our steps to the plain-looking little inn, and entering the taproom we asked for lodgings for the night. The inn is kept by a widow who still bears trace of a beauty that must have been transcendent in her girlhood. As it is, she could serve as a model to some artist for an allegorical painting representing "Sorrowful Ireland"; the arched eyebrows, the melting eyes, the long, classic nose, and the grieving mouth—very Irish and very lovely.

We have seen many pretty women here in Ireland, but in her day this inn keeper must have been the peer of any.

Her husband kept the inn formerly, but as an Irishman told me, "He died suddenly. Throuble with the head," said he, tapping his own. "'Twas heart disease, I think." This is the first Irish bull I've heard.

To the Men of '98 OLIVER SHEPHARD, SCULPTOR

My companion thought he would like a room fronting Lough Swilly and so did I.

The maid who had taken charge of us said that that wouldn't be possible, as the only available rooms having such an outlook had been engaged by wire.

"But," said my insistent friend, who is the type of American who gets what he wants by smiles if possible, but who certainly gets it, "they won't be here to-day, will they?"

"No, not to-day; to-morrow."

"Well, let us have the rooms for to-night."

"But, will ye give them up when they come?" said she, still hesitating.

"Surely. Depend upon it. Count on us to vamoose just as soon as you give the word."

"But these people come every year," said she tenaciously.

"I don't wonder at it," said O'Donnell. (My friend is of Irish descent.) "I would, too, if I didn't live so far away. Don't you worry, honey. We'll just go out like little lambs as soon as you give the word."

There was something delightfully quaint in the notion that because people were coming to the rooms to-morrow night we ought not to have them to-night—the girl was perfectly sincere. She evidently knew the lure of sunrise on the mountains and the lake and feared her ability to oust us once we were ensconced.

"We're passing on to-morrow and will be just as careful of the rooms," said O'Donnell in the tone of one who talks to a child, and the pretty maid succumbed, and our valises were deposited in the coveted rooms.

But just as she left us she said once more, "You'll go when they come, won't you?"

"We sure will," said O'Donnell, with a solemnity that carried conviction with it. "Now about dinner," said he; "we'd like dinner at six thirty. It's now four."

"We haven't begun to serve dinners at night yet," said the maid. The summer season had evidently not begun.

"Oh, that's too bad," said O'Donnell, "but you'll make an exception in our case now, won't you?"

She thought a minute, and O'Donnell smiled on her.

I can imagine ice banks melting under that smile.

"I suppose we could give you hot roast chicken," said she.

"Why, of course you could. Roast chicken is just what you could give us, and potatoes with their jackets on——"

"And soup," said the girl, evidently excited over the prospect.

"Yes, we'll leave the rest to you."

So we went out and walked through the lovely countryside, noting that in Ireland fuchsias grow to the proportions of our lilac bushes and are loaded with the pretty red flowers.

We were unable to name most of the trees we saw (but that sometimes happens in America), yet we were both sure we had not seen their like at home. And the freshness of them all, the brilliant quality of their green, fulfilled all expectations.

We took a long walk and arrived at the inn with appetites sharpened.

Friends in America had told me that I'd not fare very well in Ireland except in the large towns. I would like to ask at what small hotel—New York or Chicago or Philadelphia—I would get as well cooked or as well served a dinner as was brought to me in Londonderry for three shillings and sixpence.

If one is looking for Waldorf magnificence and French disguises he'll not find them here unless it is at Dublin, but if one is blessed with a good appetite and is willing to put up with plain cooking I fancy he will do better here than at like hotels at home.

Prosperity in Limerick

The Irish are such good cooks that we in the east (of America) have been employing them for two generations. Let us not forget that.

We entered the dining-room and had an appetizing soup and then the Irish potatoes (oh, such Irish potatoes!) and anything tenderer or better cooked than the chicken it would have been hard to find. We looked at each other and decided that we would not go on to Port Salon next day, but would spend another night in Rathmullan, and we said so to the maid.

"But you'll take other rooms?" said she, alarmed at once.

"Oh, yes, honey, we'll go anywhere you put us."

Now you know we had an itinerary, and to stay longer at Rathmullan was to cut it short somewhere else, but the stillness and calm, the purple shadows on the mountains and the lake (Lough Swilly means Lake of Shadows), had us gripped and we were content to stay and make the most of it.

A simple, golden rule sort of people the inhabitants are. We came on a man clipping hawthorn bushes and asked him how far it was to a certain point and whether we could "car" it there.

He told us we could and then he said, "Were ye thinkin' of hirin' a car, sir?"

"Yes," said O'Donnell.

"I have one," said he.

"Well," said O'Donnell, "we've talked to the landlady about hiring hers——"

"Ah, yes," said the man. "Sure I don't want ye to take mine if she expects to rint hers."

Such altruism!

We had comfortable beds in the rooms that had been engaged by wire "for to-morrow," and indeed they were so comfortable that we never saw the sunrise at all. But the view from our windows was worth the price of the rooms and that was—listen!—two shillings and sixpence apiece!

Wheat porridge and fresh eggs (oh, so fresh!) and yellow cream and graham bread and jam for breakfast. What more do you want?

Oh, yes, I know your kind, my dear sir.

"What! no steak? No chops, and fried ham and buckwheat cakes and oranges and grapefruit and hot rolls? What sort of a hotel is this for an American? You tell the landlady that they don't know how to run hotels in this country. You tell her to come to God's country, that's what. Then she'll learn how."

Yes, then she'll learn how to set out ten or twelve dinkey little saucers of peas and corn and beans and turnips and rice, all tasting alike.

But Mr. O'Donnell and I will continue to like the simplicity of this inn.

We astonished the easy-going natives by climbing the mountain on Inch Island in the morning for the magnificent view and going fishing for young cod in the afternoon. The young fellow who took us out had the somewhat Chinese name of Toye, but he was Irish.

When it came time to settle for the use of the boat and his services for a matter of two hours he wanted to leave it with us.

"No, sir," said O'Donnell. "Your Uncle Dudley doesn't do business that way," with one of his beaming smiles.

"Oh, I don't know what to charge, sir, pay me what's right."

"That's just it. I don't know what's right."

"Well, ye were not out so long. Is two shillin's apiece right?"

"Very good, indeed, and here's sixpence extra for you," said O'Donnell, paying him.

"Oh, thank you, sir," said the boy, evidently thinking the tip far too much.

But as we had caught forty-eight fish in the hour we were at the fishing grounds we felt that it was worth it. Sixpence—and to be sincerely thanked for it! There are those who are not money grubbers.

Mackerel Seller, Bundoran, Donegal

They use a tackle here that they call "chop sticks"—two pieces of bamboo fastened at right angles, from which depend the gut and hooks, while back of them is the heavy sinker. The sinker rests on the bottom and the ugly red "lugs" (bait) play around in the water until they are gulped by the voracious coddlings, or cod. We had small hooks and caught only the youngsters.

Time after time we threw in our lines, got "two strikes" at once and pulled in two cod as fast as we could pull in the line.

No sport in the way of fight on the part of the party of the second part, but not a little excitement in thus hauling in toothsome food.

We had them for supper and I tell you, O tired business man, if you want to know how good fish can taste, come over here and go a-fishin'. Like us you will stay on and on.

Oh, yes, about those other people. No, we didn't get out of our rooms, because the landlady had relatives in America and so she made other arrangements for her expected guests and we stayed on and overlooked Lough Swilly.

Americans are popular over here. But I hope they won't spoil these simple folk with either excessive tipping or excessive grumbling.

CHAPTER III

A Joyful Day in Donegal

HOLLAND is noted the world over for its neatness. The Dutch housewives spend a good part of each morning in scrubbing the sidewalks in front of their houses. Philadelphia is also a clean town and there you will see house-maids out scrubbing the front stoops and the brick pavements. Now a good part of the inhabitants of Donegal emigrate to Philadelphia. (We in America all know the song, "For I'm Off to Philadelphia in the Morning.") Well, the third neatest place that occurs to me is Rathmullan, in Lough Swilly, in County Donegal.

Whether Philadelphia is neat because of the Irish or the Irish of Donegal go to Philadelphia because it is neat, I leave to others to determine.

All my life I've read and have been told that the north of Ireland was very different from the south; that the people were better off and more thrifty, but I did not expect to see such scrupulous neatness. The houses are mostly white and severely plain in line, built of stone faced with plaster, sometimes smooth and sometimes rough finished, but always in apple-pie order (unless they were on parade the three days I was there). Even the alleys are sweet and clean, and where the people keep their pigs is a mystery to me. I snapped one, but he was being driven hither and thither after the manner of Irish pigs, and may not have lived in Rathmullan at all.

Here in the town of Donegal while the houses are not of Philadelphia neatness, they show evidence of housewifely care, and if there is abject poverty it is carefully concealed. (I have been a week in Ireland and I have not seen a beggar or a drunken man, although I have kept my eyes moving rapidly.)

In Donegal

How often must an emigrant who has elected to live in noisome tenements in American cities long for the white cottages and the green lanes and noble mountains and verdant valleys of Donegal!

Every hotel at which I have stopped so far has had hot and cold water baths and I have only been to small towns.

I heard a bathing story from a vivacious Irish lady at an evening gathering that may never have seen American printer's ink.

She said that in former times a lady stopping at a primitive hotel in the west of Ireland asked for a bath. She was told by the maid that a colonel was performing his ablutions in the room in which the bathing pan was set.

"But he'll not be long, I'm thinkin', miss," said the maid.

This lady waited awhile in her room, and at last growing impatient, she stepped out into the hall and found the maid with her eye to the keyhole of the bathroom.

On hearing the lady's footstep she turned around quite unabashed and said, "He'll be ready in a minute, miss. He's just after gettin' out of the tub."

This story was told me in a drawing-room with many young people present, so it must be true, but candor compels me to say that I have observed nothing of the kind on this trip. There are no terrors like those of a bath in an English tub of which I had occasion to speak last year.

Speaking of anecdotes, I heard one that concerned the father of the man who showed us through the lovely ruins of McSwiney's castle at Rathmullan. Son, father, and grandfather have all in their turn acted as caretakers of the ruins, and proud enough is the son of his position.

But it is of the father that the story goes.

The wife of an English admiral, whose family were in the habit of being buried in the graveyard adjoining the abbey whenever they died, departed this life, and to "Jimmy" fell the task of digging her grave.

Meeting the admiral some two weeks later he said, "It'll be ten shillings for yon grave."

"Is it ten shillings, man?" said the admiral. "Why that's extortionate. I'll pay five shillings and that's a shilling more than usual, but I'll not pay ten shillings."

"Ah, well," said Jimmy, composedly, "if ye'll not pay ten shillings then I'll dig her up again." And the admiral, knowing Jimmy to be a man of his word, paid him what does not look to be an exorbitant price.

Among the most impressive ruins in the world are those of the Grianan (or summer palace) of Aileach on Elagh mountain. Here is a circular fort of rocks some three hundred feet in circumference that antedates Christ's nativity by from two thousand to three thousand years. It is supposed to have been a temple of the sun worshippers and occupies a magnificent and awesome position from which to see either the arrival or the departure of the sun god, for the half of County Donegal lies north, south, east, and west at your feet. Such an extended view is seldom vouchsafed to the dwellers within towns and I don't wonder that the sun worshippers built there a temple to their deity.

There it still stands, its walls eighteen feet high and twelve feet thick. It has been somewhat restored by Dr. Bernard, of Derry, but does not seem to vie with the Giant's Causeway as an attraction to visitors. There were only three persons there when we went up, but there is a holy well just outside of it and from the number of bandages fluttering in the wind there I imagine that a good many maimed people manage to scale the steep ascent.

I said that Elagh mountain afforded a fine view for the dwellers within towns. It is only six miles by car and a mile by foot (I suppose seven miles in any manner would cover it) from Derry.

By the way, for ease and comfort to a naturally lazy man, commend me to a jaunting car. The cushioned top with which they cover the "well" that lies between the sidewise seats is an admirable place on which to "slop over" and loll on from the seat, and so far from being an insecure perch, it is just as safe as a dog cart or a buggy. And the motion is pleasantly stimulating to the system. The well-built, vigorous, well-fed cob trots with the regularity of a metronome or a London cab horse, reeling off mile after mile. We did our twelve miles to and from Elagh mountain in less than two hours and at a cost of three shillings apiece, exclusive of the sixpenny tip. They don't do those things as cheap in New York or Chicago.

At Donegal my friend had to see a solicitor on business and after it was over he came to me and said that the solicitor would like to take us sailing down Donegal Bay. I was delighted to go, but I wondered whether we would walk down to the bay or ride there. I knew that it was several miles out, for I had seen it across the wet sands that stretch from the town's center seaward.

My uncertainty was soon dispelled, for two minutes' walk brought us to where the bare sands had been a few hours before, and lo, Donegal Bay had come to us and the solicitor's boat was riding on the water waiting to be off. A tide is a handy thing to have about.

As one leaves the inlet and looks back he gets a picture that might have been composed by an exceedingly successful landscape gardener. The trim little town showing a bit of the ruins of Donegal castle and one graceful church spire, wooded hills running up from the town on either side; back of all this hills of greater magnitude, destitute of trees, and then, towering up in the distance, the great, gaunt Barnesmore that forms part of a heaven-kissing train.

We sailed well out into the bay with favoring winds, and had most noble views of purple mountains on every side, but when we turned to go back the wind made off to sea, laughing at us, and we came back laggingly, but in plenty of time for a cozy supper in the solicitor's home and an all evening chat with him.

We had never met until that day, but his welcome was as hearty as if he had been anxiously awaiting our coming.

As I got off the train at Donegal a heavy hand clapped me on the shoulder, and, turning, I saw Seumas McManus, whose Irish stories are so well known in America.

He lives at Mount Charles, a village lying three Irish miles from Donegal, and nothing would do but my friend and I must have dinner with him.

We accepted with pleasure, and next day walked up there, meeting more pretty girls returning from mass than it seemed right for two to meet when there were so many people in the world who seldom see a pretty face. But we tried to bear our good fortune meekly and strode on, quite conscious in the warm sun that an Irish mile has an English mile beaten by many yards. That ought to be cause for satisfaction to any Irishman.

McManus has a bungalow on top of Mount Charles, and at his feet lie seven counties. They have a way of throwing counties at your feet in this part of Ireland that makes the view superb. The furthermost land that is his to look at on a clear day lies a hundred miles to the south.

Such a view ought to stimulate a man to noble thoughts, and I was not surprised to learn that McManus is a member of the Sinn Fein (Shinn Fane) Society (it means, "Ourselves Alone"), what one might call bloodless revolutionists, although it comprises much of the best blood and the youngest blood in Ireland.

The Bungalow of Seumas McManus

McManus is an ardent believer in a glorious future for Ireland when she shall have shaken off the shackles that bind her, and as a good American, I wrote in his guest book, "May Ireland come to her own before I die."

CHAPTER IV

The Dull Gray Skies of Ireland

I AM coming more and more to believe that we have better weather in America than we give the poor country credit for. What passes for good weather here would make a poor substitute for the American article. I will not deny that it is soft and insinuating, but it is also not to be depended upon. I went out to climb a wild-looking mountain near Bundoran, on the northwest coast. To my inexperienced eye the day looked promising—that is promising rain—but the driver, of whom I had ordered a car to take me to the base of the mountain, said there'd be no rain. All those ugly clouds hovering over the summit of it were merely reminders that there was such a thing as rain, and so we started.

A Sky Line at Bundoran

And here let me make a few remarks about Irish weather in general. You are out walking in a fine "mizzle," that penetrates ordinary cloth with the utmost ease, and you meet a countryman to whom you observe "Not very pleasant." "Oh, it's a bit soft, but it's pleasant enough." What a blessing it is to be easily satisfied.

You strike a day without sun and positively chilly, and the natives assure you it is fine, that they had awful weather last week, but that, according to the barometer, the weather is going to be steady for awhile. They have borrowed the barometer habit from the English, and it really is a comfort when you're going for a long walk or drive to see that it points to fair. "Fair to middling" would be better.

Well, my driver and I set out for the mountain, and on the way I asked him the question I ask all of the peasants with whom I hold conversation, "Would you like to go to America?"

"Sure I would. I'll not be stayin' here long. I've an aunt an' a brother an' a cousin an' a sister an' an uncle beyant. There's no chance here."

I wonder whether the reason why there is no chance is because the Irishman is lacking in application. I fell in with a delightful man at a little town in County Fermanagh. I wanted a little thing done to my watch and I asked him how long it would take to do it.

He assured me that he was driven to death with work and was up till late every night trying to get ahead, but that he would try to find time to mend my watch some time before seven o'clock, when he nominally closed. Then he followed me to the door of his shop and began to ask me questions about America, which I was glad to answer, as I had a half hour to kill before starting for some sight or other, and I killed that half hour most agreeably with the little man's help. He pointed out different passers by and told me their life histories. And every once in a while he would say, "I've not had a day off for nearly a year, not even bank holiday. Never a minute for anything but work. I've an order now that's going to keep me busy, except for the time I'll give to your watch, all the rest of the day. And dinner eaten in my workshop to save time."

I told him I wished he wasn't so driven, but I knew how it was with a man who did good work, and then I bade him good day and didn't go near there until seven in the evening. I found him outside the shop discussing the strike of the constabulary at Belfast with a neighbor.

"Awfully sorry, sir, but I've been so busy to-day that I've been unable to finish that job. It'll not take over twenty minutes when I get to it. Can you come in the morning?"

I told him I could, say about eight o'clock.

"Oh, dear no. We don't open the shops until nine."

"Very well, then, nine will do."

And having some more time that I wished to kill I entered into a discussion with him and his neighbor as to the extent to which the constabulary disaffection would spread, and it was eight o'clock when I went back to my hotel.

Next morning I was at the shop at nine and he was just taking down the shutters. Said he'd worked until ten the night before, but seemed further behind than before. If I'd come up into his workroom he'd fix my watch while I waited.

Up there he had some photographs to show me that he had taken a year ago and had only just found time to develop, and we talked photography for a matter of twenty minutes, and then he fixed my watch in a jiffy when he got to work.

The Rocks at Bundoran on the West Coast

He's typical not only of Irishmen, but of Yankees, too—men who can work fast if you seal their mouths.

I was sorry I had to journey on, because our talks had been pleasant and it had never once entered his head that he was wasting that time of which he had so little, although he dealt in watches.

But to return to my driver.

When we reached the base of the mountain he put the horse up in a stone stable that belonged to a poor woman. Think of a poor woman housing her cow in a stone stable, built to stand the wear and tear of generations!

We had no sooner begun our climb of the hill or mountain than the rain came down in earnest, and my shoes were soon wet through, but I persevered, somewhat to the disappointment of the boy, who was better used to being wet on his car than on foot. But when we reached the top the view of all Donegal bay and the mountains beyond, and many other bits of geography not half as beautiful on the map as they are in nature, repaid me for my climb and wetting.

And when I said, "It's too bad it rained just as we got here," my driver said, "It's always rainin' on the mountains," although when he was getting me for a passenger he had assured me it wouldn't rain on the mountain.

We made our way down through the wet, but still beautifully purple heather, and just as we reached the level the rain stopped. It was as if our feet upon the mountain had precipitated the rain.

But at the close of the drive I found a comfortable inn and a most agreeable dinner of fresh caught fish, and that mutton that we never seem to get in America, and I still felt that the climb was worth the wetting.

But the weather never ceases to astonish me. Dull gray skies at home would depress me, but here I am thankful for dull gray skies if they only stop leaking long enough to enable me to do my accomplished task of walking or driving.

But real rain has no terrors for countryman or city man in Ireland. I attended a concert at the exhibition in Dublin (and it would not have been a tax on the imagination to pretend one was at Lunar Park in Coney Island or at the French Exposition or the Pan-American). There was the usual bandstand, and the Dublin populace to the extent of several thousands were seated on little chairs listening to the combined bands of H. M. Second Life Guards, the Eighty-seventh Royal Irish Fusiliers (Faugh-a-Ballaghs) and the Forty-second Royal Highlanders (the Black Watch).

Outside the circle of those in seats passed and repassed a slowly promenading crowd made up of pretty Dublin girls and their escorts, with mustaches as spindle-waxed as ever any Frenchman's, a sprinkling of English, and the ever-present Americans, with their alert eyes, the Americans straw-hatted, the English derbied, and the Irish, almost to a man, wearing huge, soft green or gray-visored cloth caps.

Suddenly the rain began to fall.

I know at least two Americans who put for shelter, but the Irish people present merely put up umbrellas and went on promenading and sitting and listening to the music. Gay strains from "The Mikado" (there were no Japanese present), somber umbrellas, colorful millinery and drizzling rain. An American crowd would have made for the main exhibition building, but I doubt if the Dubliners noticed that it was raining. Their umbrellas went up under subconscious direction.

After the concert the crowds went home in the double-decker electric trams, and every seat on the roof of every car was filled by the holiday crowd, although the rain was still coming down in a relentless fashion.

In the north they would have called it a bit soft. I know we felt like mush when we arrived at our hotel.

CHAPTER V

The Joys of Third-Class Travel

IN Ireland, if you wish to travel third class, it is well to get into a carriage marked "non smoking." If there is no sign on it it is a smoking compartment, quite probably, the custom here being often the direct opposite of that in Great Britain.

If you are traveling with women in the party the second class is advisable, but the third has this advantage—it saves you money that you can spend on worthless trinkets that may be confiscated by our customs house officers.

I have been ten days in the north of Ireland and I met my first drunken man in a third-class carriage.

Will the W. C. T. U. kindly make a note of this? Allow me to repeat for the benefit of those who took up the paper after I had begun—I have been ten days in Ireland and have traveled afoot, acar, and on train and tram through half a dozen northern counties and have been on the outlook for picturesque sights, and I saw my first drunken man yesterday afternoon—the afternoon of the tenth day.

He was in a third-class smoking compartment, and in my hurry to make my train I stepped in without noticing the absence of the sign.

He was a very old and rather nice-looking, clean-shaven man, and his instincts were for the most part of the kindliest, but he would have irritated Charles Dickens exceedingly, for he was an inveterate spitter, of wonderful aim, and, like the beautiful lady in the vaudeville shows whose husband surrounds her with knives without once touching her, I was surrounded but unharmed. When the old man saw my straw hat a gleam of interest came into his dull eye, and he came over and sat down right opposite me.

"Are ye a Yankee?" said he. I assured him that I was. "I thought so be your hat, but you don't talk like a Yankee." So I handed him out a few "by Goshes," which he failed to recognize and told me plainly that he doubted my nationality. Except for my hat I was no Yankee. Now my hat was made in New York, but I knew that this was a subtlety that would pass him, so I again proclaimed my nationality, and he asked me with great politeness if I objected to his smoking (keeping up his fusillade all the time) and I with polite insincerity told him that I didn't. For his intentions were of the kindliest. I believe he would have stopped spitting if I had asked him to, but I hated to deprive so old a man of so quiet a pleasure.

The talk now turned to the condition of Ireland, and he told me in his maudlin, thickly articulated way that Ireland was on the eve of a great industrial revival. As I had repeatedly heard this from the lips of perfectly sober people I believed it. I told him that he would live to see a more prosperous Ireland.

Geese in Galway

This he refused to believe and once more asked me if I was as American as my hat. I assured him that perhaps I was even more so and that his grandchildren would surely live to see Triumphant Ireland. This he accepted gladly, and coming to his place of departure, bade me kindly farewell, and stumbled over his own feet out of the compartment. And I immediately changed to one where smoking was not allowed.

It was on the same journey that I stopped at a place called Omagh, and while waiting for a connection we were at the station some time. I was reading, but suddenly became conscious that some young people were having a very happy time, for peal after peal of laughter rang through the station. After awhile I looked up and found that I was the cause of all this joy on the part of young Ireland. There were three or four girls absolutely absorbed in me and my appearance. I supposed it was again the American hat, but suddenly one of the girls "pulled a face" that I recognized as a caricature of my own none too merry countenance, and the group went off into new peals of merriment.

"How pleasant a thing it is," thought I, "that by the mere exhibition of the face nature gave me in America I can amuse perfect strangers in a far-off land," and I smiled benignantly at the young women, which had the effect of nearly sending them into hysterics.

Life was a little darker for them after the train pulled out, but I could not stay in Omagh for the mere purpose of exciting their risibles by the exposition of my gloomy features.

Everywhere I go I am a marked man. I feared for a time that there was something the matter with my appearance, but at Enniskillen I fell in with a young locomotive engineer from California, and he told me that he too aroused attention wherever he went, and that in Cork youngsters followed him shouting "Yankee!" Fancy a "Yankee" from California!

At Enniskillen I went for a walk with this young engine driver and we passed two pretty young girls, of whom he inquired the way to the park. It seems that the young women were on their way there themselves and they very obligingly showed us how to go. It occurred to the gallant young Californian that such an exhibition of kindliness was worth rewarding, and he asked the ladies if they did not care to stroll through the park. They, having nothing else to do and the evening being fine, consented, and we made a merry quartette.

I have been somewhat disappointed in the Irishman as a wit in my actual contact with him on his native heath, but these girls showed that wit was still to be found. They were very quick at decorous repartee, and although my San Francisco friend neglected to introduce me to them (possibly because he did not know their names), I paid a tribute to their gifts of conversation.

Nor should it be imagined for a moment that they were of that sisterhood so deservedly despised by that estimable and never to be too well thought of Mrs. Grundy—they were simply working girls who were out for an evening stroll and who saw in a chance conversation with representatives of the extreme east and west of America an opportunity for mental improvement.

They were, it may be, unconventional, but how much more interesting are such people than those whose lives are ordered by rule.

We left the young women in the park intent upon the glories of a day that was dying hard (after eighteen hours of daylight) and as we made our way to the hotel we agreed that a similar readiness to converse with strangers on the part of young women in New York would have given reasonable cause for various speculations.

But Ireland has a well-earned reputation for a certain thing, which the just published table of vital statistics for the year 1906 goes far to strengthen.

In the morning the young locomotive pusher and myself had attended a cattle show at Enniskillen fair grounds.

I don't mind saying that I had stayed over a day in order to go to the fair, for I have not read Irish literature for nothing, and I was perfectly willing to see a fight and ascertain the strength of a shillelagh as compared with a Celtic skull.

It was a great day for Enniskillen and for the Enniskillen Guards, who were out in force. There were also pretty maidens from all the surrounding counties and not a few of the gentry who had been attracted by the jumping contests.

But—what a disappointment.

Irishmen? Why, you'll see more Irishmen any pleasant day below Fourteenth Street in New York. And those that were there were so painfully well behaved and quiet. And as for speaking the Irish dialect—well, I wish that some of the Irish comedians who have been persuaded that Irishmen wear green whiskers would come over here and listen to Irishmen speak. They wouldn't understand them, they speak so like other people.

For ginger and noise and varied interests any New England cattle show has this one beaten to a pulp—if one may use so common an expression in a newspaper.

The noisiest things there were the bulls, and they were vociferous and huge. But the men were soft spoken and there seemed little of the "Well, I swan! I hain't seen you for more'n two years. How's it goin'?" "Oh, fair to middlin'. Able to set up an' eat spoon vittles" atmosphere in the place, although undoubtedly it was a great gathering of people who seldom met. Not a single side show. Not a three-card monte man or a whip seller or a vendor of non-intoxicants.

There was just one man selling what must have been mock oranges, for such mockeries of oranges I never saw. They were the size of peaches and the engineer told me they were filled with dusty pulp.

I bought none.

The racing and fence jumping in the afternoon were interesting, but there was no wild Yankee excitement on the part of the crowd and no hilarity. There was only one man that I noticed as having taken more than was necessary, and the only effect it had on him was to unlock the flood gates of an incoherent eloquence that caused a great deal of amusement to those who were able to extricate a sequence of ideas from the alcoholic freshet of words.

One venerable-looking man, with a flowing white beard of the sort formerly worn by Americans of the requisite years, fell from a fence where he was viewing the jumping and was knocked out for a time. He had been "overcome by the heat," at which, out of respect to him, I took off my overcoat. The Irish idea of heat is different from the New York one.

The splendid old fellow had served thirty-three years on the police force and had been a police pensioner for thirty-one years, and as he must have been twenty-one when he joined the force he was upwards of eighty-five.

Would Edward Everett Hale view a race from a picket fence? There is something in the Irish air conducive to longevity. In the evening I saw the old man standing in the doorway of a temperance hotel talking with men some seventy years younger than he.

A local tradesman told me that in the town of Enniskillen where formerly any public gathering was sure to be followed by a public fight, he had seen the Catholic band and the Orangemen's band playing amicably the same tune (I'll bet it wasn't "The Wearing of the Green"), as they marched side by side up the main street.

The world do move.

CHAPTER VI

A Few Irish Stories

IF you enter Ireland by the north, as I did, you will not hear really satisfying Irish dialect until you reach Dublin. The dialect in the north is very like Scotch, yet if it were set down absolutely phonetically it would be neither Scotch nor Irish to the average reader, but a new and hard dialect, and he would promptly skip the story that was clothed in this strange dress.

But in Dublin one hears two kinds of speech, the most rolling, full and satisfying dialect and also the most perfect English to be found in the British Isles.

It is a delight to hear one's mother tongue spoken with such careless precision, with just the suspicion of a brogue to it. I am told it is really the way that English was spoken when the most successful playwright was not Shaw, but Shakespeare.

Dublin Bay

The folk tale that follows was told me, not by a Dublin jarvey, but by a Dublin artist whose command of the right word was as great as his command of his brush.

He regaled me with many stories of Irishmen and Ireland and never let pass a chance to abuse the English in the most amusingly good-natured way. To him the English as a race were a hateful, selfish lot. Most of the Englishmen he knew personally were exceptions to this rule, but he was convinced that the average Englishman was a man who was nurtured in selfishness and hypocritical puritanism.

But this is far afield from his story of the first looking glass.

Once upon a time (said my friend) a man was out walking by the edge of the ocean and he picked up a looking glass.

Into the glass he looked and he saw there the face of himself.

"Oh," said he, "'tis a picture of my father," and he took it to his cabin and hung it on the wall. And often he would go to look at it, and always he said, "'Tis a picture of my father."

But one day he took to himself a wife, and when she went to the mirror and looked in she said:

"I thought you said this was a picture of your father. Sure, it is a picture of an ugly, red-headed woman. Who is she?"

"What have ye?" said the man. "Step away and let me to it."

So she stepped away and let him to it and he looked at it again.

"Ah," said he with a sigh (for his father was dead), "'tis a picture of my father."

"Step away," said she, "and let me see if it's no eyes at all I have. What have you with pictures of women?"

So he stepped away and let her to it, and she looked in it again.

"An ugly, red-headed woman it is," said she. "You had a lover before me," and she was very angry.

"Sure we'll leave it to the priest," said he.

And when the priest passed by they called him in and said, "Father, tell us what it is that this picture is about. I say it is my father, who is dead."

"And I say it is a red-haired woman I never saw," said the woman.

"Step away," said the priest, with authority, "and let me to it."

So they stepped away and let the priest to it, and he looked at it.

"Sure neither you nor the woman was right. What eyes have ye? It is a picture of a holy father. I will take it to adorn the church."

And he took it away with him, to the gladness of the wife, who hated the woman her husband had in the frame, and to the grief of the man, who could see his father no more.

But in the church was the picture of a holy man.

Quite the folklore quality.

I heard a story of a well-known Dublin priest, Father Healy, very witty and very kindly, who was invited by a millionaire, probably a brewer, to go on a cruise with him.

Over the seas they sailed and landed at many ports, and the priest could not put his hand into his pocket, for he was the guest of the millionaire.

At last they returned to Dublin and the millionaire, being a man of simplicity of character, the two took a tram to their destination.

"Now it's my turn," said the priest, with a twinkle in his eye, and, putting his hand in his pocket, he paid the fare for the two.

A Dublin Ice Cart

And here's another.

Two Irishmen were in Berlin at a music hall, and just in front of them sat two officers with their shakos on their heads.

Leaning forward, with a reputation for courtesy to sustain, one of the Irishmen said, pleasantly, "Please remove your helmet; I can't see the stage for the plume."

By way of reply the German officer insolently flipped the Irishman in the face with his glove.

In a second the Irishman was on his feet and in another second the officer's face was bleeding from a crashing blow.

Satisfaction having been thus obtained, the two Irishmen left the cafe and returned to their hotel, where they boasted of the affair.

Fortunately kind friends at once showed them the necessity of immediately crossing the frontier.

That the Irishman had not been run through by the officer's sword was due to the fact that he was a foreigner.

Speaking of fights, the other day an American friend of mine was taking a walk in Dublin and he came on a street fight. Four men were engaged in it, and no one else was interfering. Passers by glanced over their shoulders and walked on. Two women, evidently related to the contestants, stood by awaiting the result.

My friend mounted a flight of steps and watched the affair with unaffected interest.

A member of the Dublin constabulary happened to pass the street, and, glancing down, saw to his disgust that it was up to him to stop a fight.

Slowly he paced toward them, giving them time to finish at least one round.

But the two women saw him coming and, rushing into the mixture of fists and arms and legs, hustled the combatants into the house, and the policeman went along his beat twirling, not his club, but his waxed mustache.

I told a Dublin man of this incident, deploring my luck in not having come across it with my camera in my hand.

He said: "That policeman was undoubtedly sorry that he happened on the row. He would much have preferred to let them fight it out while he sauntered by on another street all unknowing. Not that he was afraid to run them in, but that an Irishman loves a fight."

Another sight that I saw myself at a time when my camera was not with me was two little boys, not five years apiece, engaged in a wrestling match under the auspices of their father, who proudly told me that they were very good at it. The little fellows shook hands, flew at each other, and wrestled for all they were worth. And from the time they clinched until one or the other was thrown they were laughing with joy. They wrestled for several rounds, but the laughter never left them.

How much better it is for little children to learn to fight under the watchful and appreciative eye of a kind father than to learn at the hands of vindictive strangers.

O'Connell's Monument, Dublin

CHAPTER VII

Snapping and Tipping

THE poor man never knows the cares and responsibilities that beset the man of wealth, and the man without a kodak does not know how keen is the disappointment of a picture missed—be the cause what it may.

Heretofore I have traveled care free for two reasons: one was I never had any money to speak of, and the other was I never carried a camera. I looked at the superb view, or the picturesque street group, solely for its passing interest, with never a thought of locking it up in a black box for the future delectation of my friends, and to bore transient visitors who, as I have noticed, always begin to look up their time tables when the snapshot album is produced of a rainy Sunday afternoon.

But this year some one with the glib tongue of a salesman persuaded me of the delights that were consequent on the pressing of a button, and I purchased a camera of the sort that makes its owner a marked man.

The first two or three days I was as conscious as a man who has just shaved his mustache on a dare, and who expects his wife home from the country any minute. I fancied that every one knew I was a novice, although even I hadn't seen any of my pictures as yet.

I snapped a number of friends on the steamer, and even had the audacity to make the captain look pleasant—but in his case it came natural, and really, when it was printed, even strangers could hear his hearty laugh whenever they looked at the picture, so true to life was it.

Of course it was beginner's luck, but as I went on snapping and getting the films developed I found that I had picked up a fine lens, and the pictures I was taking were really worth while, and then—

Say, have you ever had hen fever? Has your pulse ever quickened at sight of an egg you could call your own? Have you ever breathed hard, when the old hen led forth thirteen fluffy chickens and you reflected that thirteen chickens would reach the egg-laying stage in seven months, and that if each of them hatched out thirteen you would have one hundred and sixty-nine inside of a year—and then have you gone out and bought twenty old hens, so as to have wholesale success—with deplorable results? If you have done all these things you know what a man does whose first snapshots are successful. I laid in supplies of films till my pockets bulged and my purse looked lean.

And the first time the sun shone after landing at 'Derry, I went out to see the Giant's Causeway—and left my camera behind me.

Then I experienced for the first time the sensation as of personal loss, when the views that might have been mine were left where they grew.

On my way back I came on a hardened old sinner of sixty odd years teaching a little kiddie of four to smoke a cigarette. If I had had my camera I could have batted the old man over the head with it. But it was in the hotel.

When I show my views to visitors they will say, "And didn't you go to the Giant's Causeway?" nor will they accept my reason for the lack of a view. And I feel that the set is incomplete.

As time went on I noticed several things that are probably obvious to every amateur. One was that on the days on which I remembered to take my camera I saw very commonplace subjects and only snapped because I had the habit. Another was that no matter how fine the weather was when I set out with my camera, it was sure to cloud up, just as we reached the castle or met the pretty peasant girl, who was only too willing to be taken.

On the Road to Lismore, in a Rain Storm

One day I was walking from Cappoquin to Lismore, all unconscious of what lay before me, and just for wantonness I took trees and pictures that might have been in any country. At last I had but two films left, and then the meeting of several droves of cattle coming from Lismore told me that it must be Fair Day there. Just then lovely, noble, glorious Lismore castle burst on my view and I had to take it.

And then I came on the fair and saw pictures at every turn.

Funny little donkeys with heads quite buried in burlap bags the while they sought for oats, gay-petticoated and pretty-faced women in groups, grizzled farmers that looked the part, waterbutts on wheels in Rembrandtesque passageways, leading to sunlit courtyards beyond—regular prize winners if one had any sort of luck.

And then a man with an ingratiating brogue asked me to take him and his cart and almost before I knew it I had taken a sow that weighed all of five hundred pounds, and my snapshooting was over for the day.

You may be sure that next day I went well prepared, but Fair Day is only once a month, and fair days are not much more plentiful, and it rained all day, and the only thing I saw worth taking was a sort of Don Quixote windmill that had been run by a horse probably years before the expression "the curse o' Crummel" (Cromwell) came to be used, and I was in a swiftly moving train and there was a woman in the way—oh! there's no doubt that camerading is fascinating, but it is also vexatious.

Still, my advice to those about to travel is—take a camera. If it's a very rainy Sunday you may want them to leave on an early train.

Tipping is a subject that is always worth discussing. A man does not like to give less than the usual tip, and he ought not to give more, because it makes it hard for the next man, who may not be able to afford much of an expenditure.

Tipping in Ireland is a very mild thing compared to continental tipping. I'll never forget my first experience in Amsterdam. I have spent many agreeable and useful years since then, and the world has been better for my presence, for eighty-four months at least, since that day, but the comic opera features of that first wholesale tipping stand out as if I heard the whole thing last night at some Broadway theater.

There were two of us, and we had spent two delightful days in Amsterdam, doing the picture galleries and confirming Baedeker as hard as we could, and now we must give up the two huge rooms on the first floor that we occupied at the Grand Hotel (to give it a name) and make our way to other Dutch hostelries.

I said to Massenger, "How about tipping? Does it obtain in Holland?"

"Oh, yes," said Massenger, with a gleam in his eye. "It obtains all right. You leave it to them."

"How much shall I leave to them?" said I, looking at the small coins I had withdrawn from my pocket.

"Well, we have been royally treated, and there are a good many waiters and chambermaids and 'portiers,' and a proprietor or two, and the equivalent for boots, and the 'bus driver."

"But how are we to get them all?"

"Just pay your bill and you'll get them all right," said Massenger. (I should explain that whoever travels with me is called Massenger. It saves trouble.)

I did not quite understand, but I signified my intention of paying my bill, and the proprietor or his steward was all bows and smiles, and handed it to me, at the same time ringing a bell.

Then the chorus began to assemble. Lads and maidens in the persons of waiters whom I had never seen, and chambermaids of whom I had never heard, began to swarm into the office.

After they had ranged themselves picturesquely the boots began to arrive. Some from neighboring hotels who had heard the bell came running in, and grouped themselves behind the maids. Then a head waiter who looked like a tenor came seriously in and I expected that in a moment I would hear:

"'Tis the very first of May,
Though we've not a thing to say,
We will stand here, anyway
Stand awhile and sing."

I looked at Massenger and asked him what it all meant.

"It's in our honor," said he. "We've got to shell out."

And sure enough it was. We had to disgorge pro rata to all the assembled ones, and Massenger said afterward that he thought one or two of the guests came in for certain of our gratuities.

When we stepped into the 'bus, quite innocent of coins of any sort, I listened, expecting to hear:

"Now, in spite of rainy day,
We have gone and made our hay.
And I don't care what you say,
When the Yankees come this way
We get what they bring."

They got it all right, but I was quite unnerved for some time. The attack had been so sudden.

In Ireland there is nothing to equal this for system, and a copper does make a man feel grateful—or at least it does make him express gratitude. I have yet to hear curses in Ireland.

But when you visit private houses you don't know what to do. Tips are expected there—not by everybody, but by maid and coachman, anyhow, and you wonder what is the right thing to do.

To be sure you have caused trouble. You have placed your boots outside your door, just as you have latterly learned to do at home, and it was a maid who gave them that dull polish that wears out in a half hour. Leave polish behind when you leave America—that seems, by the way, to be the motto of a good many traveling Americans, but I referred to the kind that you can see your face in when imparted by an Italian.

Milk Wagon, Mallow

I had an experience when on my way to visit Lady ——, in County Monaghan, in the central part of Ireland.

Just how much to tip a coachman of a "Lady" I did not know. A shilling did not seem enough, and two shillings seemed a good deal, and the fellow did not have the arrogance of an English coachman. He was simple and kindly, and was willing to talk to me, although he never ventured a word unless I spoke to him.

When I had alighted at Ballybully station a ragged man had seized my valise, and on ascertaining my destination had carried it to a smart jaunting car driven by a liveried driver. I offered him a copper, and he looked at it and said, "Sure, you're too rich a man to be contint with that."

So to contint meself I gave him sixpence, just what I had paid for having my trunk carried one hundred and eighty miles, and climbed to the car.

On the way to the estate of Lady Clancarty (to give her a name also) I figured on what I'd better give. To give too much would be as bad as to give too little. Still, if it cost a sixpence for my suit case to go a hundred yards, a three-mile drive should be worth a half pound at least.

At last, just as we were driving in at the lodge gates, I foresaw that I must make haste—as it would never do to hand out my tip in the presence of my hostess—so I reached over the "well" and handed two shillings to the driver. He seemed surprised and pulled a bit hard on the left line. There was a swerve, a loud snap, and the step of the car was broken short off against the gate!

I was conscience-stricken, but said not a word for a minute. Then the driver said, "I've been driving for twinty-three years and niver had an accident before."

He had jumped out and thrown the step into the "well" between us.

I had visions of the sacking of the old family driver, and all because I had not known how much of a gratuity to give him.

But when I offered to make up the damage he said, "Indeed an' I'll be able to fix it myself." And fix it he did, so that no one was the wiser.

But the pain of those few moments when I expected to be driven into the presence of my hostess with the car a wreck will not soon fade.

As a matter of fact, it was a good half mile to the house after we left the lodge, and when we arrived I jumped from the seat without using the step, and no one ever knew the humiliation that had come to the driver after twenty-three years.

CHAPTER VIII

Random Remarks on Things Corkonian

THEY told me that Cork was a very dirty city. They even said it was filthy, and they said it in such a way as to reflect on Irishmen in general and Corkonians in particular.

Yes, they said that Cork was a dirty city, and so I found it—almost as dirty as New York. This may sound like a strong statement, but I mean it.

When I arrived in Cork I saw a hill and made for it at once, because after railway there is nothing that so takes the kinks out of a fellow's legs as a walk up a stiff hill. And anyhow I was on a walking tour.

I arrived at the top about sunset. On reading this sentence over I find that it sounds as if the hill was an all-day journey, but it was only a matter of a few squares, and when I started the sun had long since made up its mind to set.

In Ireland the sun takes on Irish ways, and is just a little dilatory. It always means to set, and it always does set in time to avoid being out in the dark, but it's "an unconscionably long time a dying."

At the summit of the hill I saw a church steeple that appealed to my esthetic sense, and I asked a little boy what church it was.

"Shandon churrch, sirr," said he with the rapid and undulating utterance of the Corkonian.

"Where the bells are?" said I.

"Yes," said he, smiling. "And over beyont is the Lee."

"The pleasant waters of the river Lee," I quoted at him, and he smiled again. Probably every traveler who goes to Cork quotes the lovely old bit of doggerel, but the Corkonian smiles and smiles.

The river Lee runs through the center of Cork, and at evening it is a favorite place for fishing, also for learning to swim on dry land.

The fishermen seem to fish for the love of casting, and the little boys swim on the pavement—two pursuits as useless as they are pleasant. Over the bridge the fishermen leaned, and cast their lines in anything but pleasant places—for the river is malodorous—and the little boys stood on benches and dived to the pavement, where they spat and then went through the motions of swimming.

There were dozens of the little boys, and most of them seemed to be brothers. Some of them were quite expert in diving backward, and all of them were dirty, but they seemed to be happy. I could not help thinking how soon the Celtic mind begins to use symbols, for it was easy to see that when the boys spat it signified a watering place to them. I dare say they were breaking a city ordinance in spitting, and if they knew that they were that much happier—stolen sweets are the sweetest.

During the time I watched the setting sun—which was still at it and, by the way, performed some lovely variations on a simple color scheme in the sky—not even an eel was caught, but the fishermen cast under the bridge, let their bait float down the (un) pleasant waters, and drew in their lines again and again—mute examples of a patience that one does not associate with Ireland.

At last I left them and started out to find Shandon church, which seemed but a few squares away.

My pathway led through the slums, and up a hill so steep that I hope horses only use it as a means of descent. I passed one fireside where the folks looked cosy and happy and warm. It was a summer evening, but chilly, and the place into which I looked was a shop for the sale of coal. Shoemakers' children are generally barefooted, but these people were burning their own coal, and the mother and the dirty children sprawled around the store or home, in a shadow-casting way, that would have delighted Mynheer Rembrandt if he had passed by.

I was struck with the population of Cork. It was most of it on the sidewalk, and nearly all of it was under sixteen. Pretty faces, too, among them, and happy looking. I think that sympathy would have been wasted on them. They had so much more room than they would have had in New York, and they were not any dirtier—than New Yorkers of the same class.

After I had reached the top of the hill I turned and looked for Shandon church and it was gone. I asked a boy what had become of it, and he told me that in following my winding way through the convolutions known as streets I had gotten as far from the church as I could in the time. He told me pleasantly just how to go to get to the church, and it involved going to the foot of the hill and beginning again.

I asked a number of times after that, and always got courteous but rapid answers. The Irish are great talkers, but the Corkonian could handicap himself with a morning's silence, and beat his brothers from other counties before evening.

At last I came on the church, passing, just before I reached it, the Greencoat Hospital National School, with its quaint and curious (to quote three of Poe's words) statues of a green-coated boy and girl.

I asked a man when the bells began to ring (for I had been told that they only rang at night).

"'Every quar-rter of an hour, sirr, they'll be ringing in a couple of minutes, sirr."

Green Coat Hospital, Cork

One likes to indulge in a bit of sentiment sometimes, and I stood and waited to hear the bells of Shandon that sound so grand on the pleasant waters of the river Lee. I had left the Lee to the fishermen and the make-believe swimmers, but the bells would sound sweetly here under the tower that held them.

A minute passed, and then another, and then I heard music—music that called forth old memories of days long since dead. How it pealed out its delight on the (icy) air of night. And how well I knew the tune:

"Down where the Wurzburger flows."

No, it was not the chimes, but a nurse in the hospital at a piano. Before she had finished, Shandon bells began, but they played what did not blend with what she sang, and I went on my way thinking on the potency of music.

I passed on down where the river Lee flowed, and the fishermen were still fishing, but the little boys had tired of swimming.

Two signs met me at nearly every corner. One read, "James J. Murphy & Co.," and the other "Beamish & Crawford," or "Crawford & Beamish," I forget which. Both marked the places of publicans (and sinners, I doubt not), and both were brewers' names. The publican's own name never appeared, but these names were omnipresent.

Again I thought of Shandon bells, and the romantic song, "Down Where the Wurzburger Flows," and leaving the Lee still flowing I sought my hotel.

I would like to make a revolutionary statement, that is more often thought than uttered, but before I make it, I would like to say that there are two classes of travelers: those who think there is nothing in Europe that compares with similar things in America, and those who think there is nothing in America that can hold a candle to similar things in Europe.

I hope I belong to neither class. If I mistake not, I am a Pharisee, and thank my stars that I am not as other men are. Most of us are Pharisees, but few will admit it.

I began being a Pharisee when I was a small child, and that is the time that most people begin.

I kept it up. In this, I am—like the multitude.

Having thus stated my position, let me go on to say, that I am perfectly willing to admit that this or that bit of scenery in France, or Switzerland, or England, or Ireland, lays over anything of the sort I ever saw in America, if I think it does, and I am equally willing to say, that America has almost unknown bits that are far better than admired and poet-ridden places in Europe.

Twin Lakes in Connecticut is one of them, and Killarney is a poet-ridden place.

Why, even in Ireland there are places just as lovely as Killarney, but they have not been written up, and so no one goes to visit them.

I felt that one of the worst things about Killarney was the American sightseer, and I came away soon.

Cook's tourists have never heard of Twin Lakes, thank fortune, and it will be some time before they (the lakes) are spoiled.

The Lakes of Killarney are so beautiful that they are worthy of the pen of a poet, but the pen of a poet does not make any lake more beautiful, and I am quarreling because so many people refuse to believe the evidence of their own senses, and take their natural beauties at the say so of another.

There is a tower going up in New York at present, a tower that with the exception of the Eiffel Tower is the tallest on earth.

Many persons look at it, reflect that it is a skyscraper, and then dismiss it as therefore hideous. But it is really very beautiful, and seen from certain vantage points, it is architecturally one of the glories of New York.

A bit of Killarney

If it ever gains a reputation for beauty, you will find persons raving over it, who to-day class it among the "hideous skyscrapers."

A hundred years ago there were some skyscrapers in Switzerland, and they were thought to be hideous. After awhile a man with a poet's eyes and a courageous tongue visited them, and he said "The Alps are beautiful."

When their reputation for beauty was established, travelers left the region round about the Rockies to go and rave over the beauties of Switzerland.

That's all.

CHAPTER IX

A Visit to Mount Mellaray

MANY persons whom I met in Ireland told me that I ought to go to Mount Mellaray "for my sins." Mount Mellaray (to those who don't know) is a Trappist monastery, set among hills that would be at once the temptation and despair of a colorist in landscape.

To it go the brain and heart weary from all countries, and the good monks (there's no doubt that they are good) welcome them whether they have money or not.

They tell of a man who went to Mount Mellaray and accepted the hospitality of the inmates and on his going away he did no more than bid them good by. Not a penny did he leave behind him, although he had sat at table with the other guests several days.

Next year he came again for his soul's rest, and the monks received him as an old friend. Those who were not under vows of silence spoke to him, the others nodded to him, and once more he rested on the side of the purple hills and partook of their hospitality.

When it came time for him to go away he left behind him—a pleasant impression, but not a cent did he give to the cause of charity.

Another year passed by, and he came again. Hundreds had come in the meantime, and none so poor but had left something in return for the restfulness and peace that are to be had there.

Quite as an old friend he was now received and was made to feel welcome. No one knew who he was—perhaps he was nobody—but on his going away for the third time he showed that he had been but acting the part of an ingrate, for he gave the father who acts as keeper of the gate a hundred pounds.

This story I told to the jarvey who took me up the hilly road to the monastery, and he listened with interest, and when I had finished he said, "It's quite true."

As I did not expect to visit it again I made up my mind to do my giving on leaving the place, but my hundred pound notes are all in the future, and therefore no one can ever tell a similar tale of me.

I must confess that, being a Protestant, I felt a little compunction about going to the place, but I had been assured that my sect would make no difference, that the fathers were glad to receive all who came, and that I would be as well treated as though I were a saint.

On my way up my jarvey told me of the amount of good that the monks do, not only in a spiritual, but in a material way, by providing work for the able-bodied men of the vicinity.

We passed a neat stone cottage with ivy growing on it, and a vigorous fuchsia tree blooming in the garden, and he told me that it was a government cottage and rented for the absurd sum of a shilling a week.

"And how much can a man earn in the fields?" said I.

"A matter of ten shillings a week," was his reply.

Query: If a man gets ten dollars a week in New York and lives in a crowded Harlem flat for which he pays at least five dollars a week, is he as well off as this Irishman, in his native land, with all the fresh air in the world, fowls and fresh eggs, and butter of his wife's making, and one of the loveliest views imaginable before him?

But you'll find the man in the neat little government cottage anxious to fly to the land of dollars—and when he's there he'll hand out more dollars to his landlord for inadequate accommodations than he could earn at home in a month of Sundays.

Human nature is human nature, and the daisies in the field over the pond are always more beautiful than the ones that lie at your feet.

I was received at the monastery by a monk, who on learning that I wished to become a guest, took me over to the guest house, and there a white-robed father took my surname, and I began to feel that I had renounced the world, and that perhaps I was trying something that I would regret, and wouldn't mamma come and get me.

But the bearded man before me was kindly, and when I told him (not wishing to sail under false colors) that I was a Protestant, he told me that it was a fast day, and had I dined.

Fortunately I had eaten heartily at noon. "If ye have not dined we can give you something substantial," said he, but I decided that it would be better to be treated as the other guests were to be treated, and so I told him, and he said that at six o'clock there would be tea, and that at eight I would retire to my room, and at ten all lights must be out.

It was raining dismally, but he said that I could go for a walk in the garden, or stay in my room, or go to the "smoke shed," to smoke a pipe or a cigar.

I chose the smoke shed as I understood there were other human beings there, and although I had only been in the monastery five minutes, I felt the need of companionship.

After a brother had taken my traps to my room, I went out to the smoke shed, and found there some ten or twelve guests, five or six of them priests, and all Catholics but myself.

They were very quiet as I came up, and I feared to speak above a whisper myself, but a jolly-looking priest, seeing a newspaper sticking out of my raincoat pocket, said: "Is that to-day's paper?" and on my saying it was, he asked me if he might borrow it, and then he stood up in front of them all and said:

"The news of the day.... 'Irish Ireland. A Leaguer's Point of View.' 'The French Trunk Horror.' 'The Bachelor Tax,' discussed by Mr. Dooley."

"Rade that, father," said a young chap with a twinkling eye.

"Sure it's in dialect," said the priest with a smile, and his own brogue.

"Never mind. Go ahead. 'Tis a dreary day."

The paper was the Dublin Independent, and in a moment more I was listening to the familiar humor of the funniest man in America, and that in a monastery, of all places.

"'This here pa-aper says,' said Mr. Hennessy, 'that they're goin' to put a tax on bachelors. That's r-right. Why shudden't there be a tax on bachelors? There's one on dogs.'"

Loud was the laughter in the smoke shed at this sally, and none laughed louder than those professional bachelors, the priests.

Street in Youghal

"'I suppose,' said Mr. Dooley, 'that next year ye expect to see me throttin' around with a leather collar an' a brass tag on me neck. If me tax isn't paid th' bachelor wagon'll come around, an' th' bachelor catcher'll lasso me an' take me to the pound, an' I'll be kept there three days, an' thin, if still unclaimed, I'll be dhrowned, onless th' pound keeper takes a fancy to me.'" (Loud laughter by priests and laymen.)

The ice thus broken by my friend Dunne, I was soon in conversation with the group, and discovered two compatriots from Indiana, one a native of Ireland returning to visit it once more before he departed, the other his son.

Vesper bells broke up the talk, and I went with the rest to chapel.

After vespers came "tea," which I had supposed would be literally nothing else, but there was the most delicious graham bread I have had since I came to Ireland, and unlimited milk. There was no butter, as it was a fast day. This I regretted keenly.

Talk went on among us all until a bearded monk in white came in and began to read passages from Thomas à Kempis. His enunciation was peculiarly pure, and I doubt not that he was a gentleman born. It was a pleasure to hear such English. While he read we were all silent.

After supper we went out to the garden, and in a sheltered place (although we did not need a shelter, as the fickle rain had stopped) those who wished played a spirited game that consisted of tossing stones into a little pocket of earth. One of the priests was an adept, and he carried all before him.

In such simple pleasures, or in walking, the evening was spent until it came time to go to chapel again.

One of my companions (and they were there from all parts of Ireland, and you might hear the Scotch accent of the north, the pure Dublin and Wicklow Elizabethan English, the slightly thickened Waterford variety, and the hurried talk of the Corkonian, as well as other styles I could not place—probably west coast dialects, mournful and slow) asked me what I thought of Ireland, and I told him my impressions had been tremendously favorable so far. He said that a man who had returned not long since told him that Ireland was hopelessly behind the times, and I told him, for his comfort, that to take one instance in which Ireland was up to date, the tram service in Dublin was far ahead of that of New York, both in the elegance of its rolling stock, its cheapness, and the civility of its employes. He was much amused at the idea of horse cars in New York. (Electric cars play an important part in all the large Irish cities, and a ride on the top of one to Howth, a lovely suburb of Dublin, is worth every bit of the eight cents it costs).

They have yet to introduce the transfer system, but in other particulars, like Mr. O'Reilly, "they're doin' dam' well." All this I told him.

At eight I sought my room, where there was reading matter suitable to the place, but the candle was not conducive to extended reading unless I held it close to the book, and then it dazzled me, and at nine o'clock I was in my bed, and until two in the morning the house was quiet, save for a snore here and there. But at two the bells began to ring, and kept it up at intervals all through the night. I was told this, but "tired nature's sweet restorer, balmy sleep," came to my aid, and I dreamed it was a feast day and that all the monks were sitting at the breakfast table, singing at each other joyfully.

Next day was a feast day (to my relief). I was up at six, but it was some time after that that I heard steps in the hall. I had looked out of the window from time to time, hoping to see some one in the garden. The table of the duties of the day hung in my room, and I noticed that breakfast was at nine. Luckily I had some chocolate, or I might have felt I was likely to faint by the wayside.

I did not go to early devotion, and when I heard the footsteps in the hall I opened my door and found that it was Father David, the keeper of the gate, going around to see if any were still in bed. When he saw me, he said to the brother who accompanied him, "Oh, it doesn't make any difference with him." Then to me, "Would you like to walk in the garden?" I said that I would, and walked round and round its lonely paths for over an hour, now and then eating a square of chocolate to keep off death.

But before eight the good father came and asked me if I'd like to see the interior of the monastery, and he showed me the bakeshop with its most up to date ovens, and oh, how hungry the smell of baking made me, and the steam-saw, and the creamery, and the library with its old newspaper telling to Irishmen that Cromwell had departed to his rest the day before. Not very sorrowful news, that, I imagine, to the Irishman of that day.

And Father David showed me and the other Americans an incubator, and explained the process, with an innocent circumstantiality that we respected. Why tell him that the woods were full of incubators in America? The things that appealed most to him, however, was the big circular saw that would saw up a log of wood in a "minyit."

With his permission I took a photograph of a beautiful Irish cross in the graveyard, but when I suggested my taking him, he averted his palms at me. Such vanities were not for him.

At breakfast there were eggs and milk and tea, and delicious butter in abundance, and the reading of some holy book by Father David, which did not stop all conversation. Being a feast day, there was one priest who felt his tongue could be loosened, and he kept up an undercurrent of conversation, to Father David's annoyance, but it was a human touch that was not out of place.

The monks are themselves vegetarians, but a school is run in connection with the monastery, and the students are allowed meats.

At nine my jarvey called for me and took me to the boat for Youghal, and I made my offering and shook hands with Father David, and felt that I had been benefited by my stay in the retreat. I even felt that had I more time at my disposal, I would stay on for several days, talking with the guests, pitching stones into the hole, and looking at the rolling landscape and the awe-inspiring hills behind the chapel spire.

One thing in America had interested Father David—the Thaw trial—and he wanted to know if Thaw would be hanged.

One day the only American news in the 'Derry papers was to the effect that Evelyn Thaw thought of going on the stage.

Not our art, or our literature, or our suppression of the boss, but the Thaw trial, is the thing that has made a deep impress on Great Britain and Ireland, and everywhere I am asked to give an opinion.

The Thaw trial was a matter of moment to the good old man, with his incubators and his steam saw and his absence of personal vanity.

As half way down the mountain I turned and looked back at the spire against the somber hills (for it had begun to rain) I wished that my camera would take them for me, but I knew that snapshots of hills are like literary snapshots—inadequate.

CHAPTER X

A Dinner I Didn't Have

THE best laid schemes of mice and men aft gang aglee, or words to that effect, and in a small village in County Wicklow I fared differently from what had been my expectation.

I had a letter to a literary man of whom I had heard nothing but pleasant words, and I looked forward to spending several hours with him.

I had dispatched my letter of introduction to him over night, intending to perch on his door sill during a flight from Dublin further south: Waterford and Cork.

The day was beautiful (whenever the clouds rolled away from before the sun) and as I left my grips in the station and fared forth I imagined how pleasantly we would talk together on matters and things, how soon we would find we had mutual friends, how possible it was that one or the other of us would commit the bromide of "It's a small world after all, isn't it?"

It was a long time before the dinner hour, but if he invited me to stay on and dine I would certainly do it. Tasteful napery, handsome women, light and joyous talk, delicate viands and sparkling wines—

"Plaze, sorr, would ye help a poor man to's dinner. I've walked from Ovoca the day an' devil a bit or a sup is in me."

A beggar!

The idea of a man who never saw me before asking me and evidently expecting me to help him to a dinner.

But of course when you meet a fellow out in the country away from professional beggars you naturally feel like helping him, particularly if the Irish weather is so fine that it hasn't rained for a quarter of an hour—

Thatched Cottage, Wicklow

"Oh, thank ye, sorr. May your bed in heaven be aisy an' may ye oversleep on the day of judgment."

A kind wish.

As I walked on I couldn't help thinking how similar was his case to my own. In all probability he had the price of a meal in his pocket when he met me and I too had the price of several meals in my pocket and even as he had "braced" a total stranger, so I was about to do the same thing, only I expected intellectual talk, a dinner, possibly a drive around the country, and when all was said and done I wouldn't be able for my quid pro quo to call down such a blessing as he had given me.

At last I came to the lodge of Heatherdale and asked if Mr. W—— was in.

He was not. He had gone by an early train to Dublin and would not be back until seven.

Oh, such a noise of falling air castles.

My letter had been to him, not to his wife.

I could not, or at least I felt that I could not present my card to her and explain that I was very much disappointed, and would Mrs. W—— kindly entertain me with intellectual talk and food and drink.

I turned sadly away and put on my raincoat (for it had begun to rain dismally as soon as the lodgekeeper had told me Mr. W—— was out) and made my way back to the station, intending to take the next train.

The urbane station master, resplendent in a gay new uniform, told me kindly but firmly that there was no train until seven o'clock, that that train did not go as far as Waterford, only to Wexford, and that my through ticket to Waterford was good for this day only and would be waste cardboard when the morning dawned, and I took the first train from Wexford there.

That meant the price of an excellent dinner thrown away——

An excellent dinner. It was twelve o'clock; time to begin to think of a dinner of some kind.

No (said the station master) there was no hotel in the place. I might get something at some farmhouse, but no dinner anywhere.

And Mr. W—— in Dublin for the day. What good had the tramp's blessing done me?

I left the station and walked toward the village. At last I came to a "public" and there I found my tramp drinking porter with gusto—but nothing else. His hunger had evidently departed. Perhaps the same thing that had put it to flight would allay mine.

But the first incivility that I have received since I came to Ireland was offered me here. The proprietress of the public laughed at me and said that they had nothing but bread in the house—and she evidently did not care to part with that.

"There's a good hotel at Rathdrum, sorr," said the tramp to me. "It's not five miles away an' the road light as a feather, barrin' the mud."

I had no notion of going five miles on the light road on the light breakfast I had eaten—and no certainty that there would be a dinner at Rathdrum, so I left the public, and the rain having stopped and the sunshine having come out with a most businesslike air, as much as to say, "See here, you clouds have been running things altogether too much lately; it's now my turn at the wheel," I set out as blithely as I could (with the thought of my letter of introduction crossing Mr. W—— on his way to town and me a homeless wanderer) and before long I came to a little whitewashed cabin in front of which a handsome old woman in a man's cap was bending over some flowers.

"Good morning. Can you let me have something to eat?"

"Sure 'tis little I have," said she, with a smile that took five years off her age.

"Some fresh eggs, perhaps, or some milk?"

"Aye, I can give ye those, but me house is no place for the likes——"

"That'll be just what I want," said I, and she went into the house and bade me follow.

Fresh eggs and unlimited milk are not the same as brill and young lamb and sauterne and cigars and witty conversation, but when you are hungry from outdoor exercise they are not so bad.

And Mrs. Kelly, like every other man, woman, and child in the whole of Ireland, had relatives in America.

She'd a son there long since and Ja-mes just turned twenty-one had gone there this summer to the "states of Indiana. Did I know the states of Indiana?"

I told her I did, that I'd been to them many a time. And where did "Ja-mes go to—to what city?"

To Lafayette (with as French an accent as you'd wish) and was I ever there?

I was. Her face lighted up.

If I went there again would I ask for Ja-mes Kelly an' he'd be her son an' as fine a boy as ever left Ireland (with a true Dublin roll of the r).

Still thinking of the dinner I had not had at Heatherdale house I asked her if she knew Mr. W——.

"Sure I do, an' the finest man in all Ireland. Me boy Ja-mes worked there at gardening and whin he was leaving for America Mr. W—— gave a dinner for him to all the villagers and gave him a watch with his name on it and 'in remimbrance of Heatherdale' in it. Oh, yes, a fine man an' humble. Sure, if Jimmy'd be sick for a day it's Mr. W—— would be down here in me cottage askin' afther him an' could he be doing annything for him.

"Humbleness. That what the blissed Lord taught us. He could have been borrn in a palace, but he was borrn in a stable in Bethleham. Are you a Catholic?"

"No—"

"Ah, never mind. There's arl kinds of good people——"

"Is Mr. W—— a Protestant?"

"Sure, I dunno," was Mrs. Kelly's guarded reply. "He goes to the Protestant church, but I don't know what he is, on'y he's a good man—none better in all Ireland.

"The good Lord," she continued, as she filled up my cup with rich milk (she had no tumblers at all, she said), "taught us to be kind to one another and to be humble, the same as He was kind and humble, although He could have had a palace if He'd chosen, and if we keep His commandments we'll all go to heaven, but if we don't (here the good Mrs. Kelly lowered her voice) we'll be damned in everlasting fire. The Lord tells us so."

I told her that I had heard such things, that I had a grandmother who taught me all about "Bethleham" and the rest——

"Oh, the good woman," said Mrs. Kelly, feelingly. "Well, it's true. Be kind and be good and be humble and ye'll be rewarrded."

After I had finished the lunch she asked me if I could take a picture of her.

I told her that I could, but she must come out of doors. Off came her man's cap and she arranged her wisps of white hair and washed her face and then said, "Be sure to get me eyes good and clear. I do take a fairly (very) good picture, and me eyes always come out fine."

The good woman had eyes she might well be proud of in spite of her desire to be humble, and they danced and snapped with joy as I leveled the camera at her and took her photograph.

All the afternoon I climbed the beautiful heather purpled hills in the vicinity with her youngest son, a boy of nineteen, eating wild fraochans, a kind of whortle-berry, and had "afternoon tea" with her at six and then went on to catch my train.

The son was a very intelligent boy and I was struck with his easy and correct use of English. He told me that it was easier to understand me than an Englishman, and I took it as a compliment, for I certainly never heard better English spoken than is talked in the Dublin district by rich and poor alike. London and New York should come to Dublin and vicinity to learn the proper pronunciation of English.

Wicklow Peasants

As I left the village I felt that I had lost one good time to have another, and the day on the hills made me sleep like a top.

CHAPTER XI

What Ireland Wants

BEFORE I went to Ireland I imagined the Irish standing in a crowd with their right hands pointing to heaven and all of them demanding home rule. But talk about shades of opinion and political differences at home, why, it's nothing to the mixture here.

I meet a man to-day and as I shake his hand I tell him with heartfelt sympathy that I hope he'll get home rule, that most of us are with him in the United States, and he wrings my hand and tells me that American sympathy is the thing that has kept Ireland up.

My bosom swells with pride and I feel that I have hit on just the right phrase to use.

Next day I meet another Irishman, a Protestant from Belfast, and as I wring his hand with emotional fervor, I tell him that I hope he'll get home rule, and he pulls his hand from my grasp to bring it down on desk or counter or table with impetuosity, as he says, "Ireland doesn't want home rule. If the phrase had never been coined Ireland would be happy to-day. What Ireland wants is less sympathy from outsiders. If my child bumps his head and begins to cry, I say, 'Sure it's nothing. Brave boys like to bump their heads,' and he begins to laugh and forgets about it. But if a stranger says, 'Poor Patsy. It must hurt awfully,' then he sets up a howl about it and fancies he's injured. What Ireland needs is to forget her troubles and her political disabilities and work. An Irish workingman in Ireland is the laziest man alive. When he goes to America or Canada or Australia and is released from priestly authority he's a hard worker and a success, but Paddy in the fields is always looking for saints' days—and finding them—and when he finds them he takes a holiday."

I am silent because I really know so little about it, but next day I meet another Protestant and I say to him, "I suppose it's Rome rule that is killing Ireland?"

He's up in the air at once and tells me that it is the priests who are interesting the peasants in the revival of industries long dormant.

"Aren't the priests fine-looking men?" says he.

"Yes," breaks in another Irishman, "and they ought to be the fathers of families. All that good blood going to waste and their lines ending with them instead of enriching the blood of Ireland in future generations. That's what celibacy does."

Another Irishman chimes in, "Oh, the priests are not such a fine lot. The constabulary are, I'll admit, but the most of them are as useless as the priests. Most of their time is spent training canaries, for there's little else for them to do in the country districts. But the priests; sure a man says, 'Oh, Jimmy's no good at all at all. Let's make a priest of him.'"

"It's folly you're talking," says the one who spoke for the priests. "There's not a finer body of men in Ireland than the priests."

"Oh," says the other, with Irish wit, "there's white sheep in every fold, I'll admit, but if Ireland was free from political and religious domination, she'd be able to stand upright and she wouldn't need home rule."

All of which is very perplexing to the man who came to Ireland thinking that with the exception of a few Orangemen all Ireland was working morning, noon, and night for home rule.

Next day I meet a man I know to be a Protestant and I say to him in my easy-going way (being all things to all men when I am traveling, in order to save wear and tear), "The Catholic religion is keeping Ireland back, is it not?"

He looks at me for a moment and then a spiritual light illumines his eyes and he says: "Protestantism is always death to arts. Look at Shakespeare, the last Catholic that England had, as you might say, and look at his work with its artistry, its absence of dogmatism, and then look at Protestant and tiresome Wordsworth and Protestant and didactic Tennyson. Spenser was a great artist. Spenser was a Catholic. Catholicism emancipates the artistic side of a man's nature, puritanism seals it up, dams it, condemns him to preach sermons.

"The Irish are the most artistic people on the face of the earth when Protestantism has not been allowed to stamp their idealism out of them."

"But I thought you were a Protestant. Then I suppose that you think that the priests——"

"I think that the priests ought never to be allowed to tamper with education. Spiritually they release Irishmen from puritan fetters (I speak as a Protestant and the son of a Protestant) but politically and educationally they are millstones about Ireland's neck."

I leave him and going to Hibernia Hall in Dublin, where the work of Irish industries is being displayed, and where stands temporarily St. Gaudens's splendid statue of Parnell, and I see there Augustine Birrell, whom I believe to be one of Ireland's warmest and truest friends.

I am talking to a handsome six-foot priest.

"Ah, there's Birrell," I say to him.

"Yes," says he with a twinkle in his Irish eyes, "'twould be a fine chance to drop a little dynamite under him."

I leave the hall hurriedly and listen outside for the explosion, meanwhile wondering why a priest who wants home rule hates Birrell, who has tried to give Ireland a modified version of it.

I meet a literary Catholic and ask him whether home rule would mean Rome rule and he tells me that it would not; that the Catholics would not stand for priestly interference with politics; that the priests themselves would not desire to interfere.

Next day I ask a jarvey if he wants home rule and he says, "Begorry, higher wages would be better. I'd not be botherin' with home rule if there was enough to keep me sons busy."

"Well, Michael, would home rule mean Rome rule?"

"Sure it would. Isn't the pope the head of the church?"

Ireland seems to be a house divided against itself.

I like the father of the family very much. We'll say he comes from the south of Ireland and is a Catholic. He's a witty man, a hospitable man, a cheery man, but won't speak to his oldest son, because he's a Belfast Unionist and believes in letting well enough alone.

Lost in His Lunch, Mallow, County Kerry

Now the eldest son is a delightful fellow. A little more reserved than his southern father, but just as hospitable, just as cheery—almost as witty. The mother is a Sinn Feiner, an idealist of the idealists. She believes that Irishmen ought to withdraw from Parliament. She urges her son, who is in Parliament, to resign, to boycott England, to get his brother members of Parliament to come home and form a National Council in Dublin. She doesn't believe in war, but she hates England with an animosity that is positively amusing to one whose forbears fought England and had done with the fight long ago. She won't speak to her daughter, who believes in working for home rule in season and out of season in London.

The mother is witty and cheery, and, oh, so hospitable, but when I visit the daughter I don't mention the old lady to her, for in spite of the ingrained love for parents that is almost as strong in an Irishman as it is in a Chinaman, she says very sharp things about her unpractical mother. But when we leave politics alone, she is cheery and witty, and always as hospitable as she can be.

Now, if by means of arousing a truly national spirit (and the Gaelic League is going about it in the right way) this family of witty and cheery and hospitable people can be induced to sink minor differences and act together they'll get what they want—whatever that is. And then won't they be the happy family?

And I'm sure I do hope with all my heart that they'll get it.

For they won't be happy till they get it.

CHAPTER XII

A Hunt for Irish Fairies

"I'LL niver forget wan gintleman that kem here from America. He'd been borrn here, but had gone to Chicago whin he was a lad, an' he had made a fortune.

"He had hundreds under him, an' he told me he had niver touched a drop of liquor. Oh, he was the kind man. He hired me car every day he was here, an' he said anny time I wanted to sind anny of me sons over, to sind them to him an' he'd take them on an' pay them good wages.

"Oh, he was the ginerous man, too ginerous in fact. He'd scatter his money like water whin he'd be in liquor——"

"Why, I thought you said he never touched a drop, Michael."

"Oh," with a toss of the head. "Sure that was in America. Bein' on a holiday here he tasted it, an' likin' the taste he kep' on.

"Sure he'd fling money out be the handfuls if I'd let him. I told him if he done that the news of it would spread an' some of the wilder ones would demand it of him, an' wance I refused to go anny further till he'd promise to stop throwin' money away—half soverigns, mind ye.

"Ah, but he was the kind man, drunk or sober. The day before he left—an' he was here two or three weeks huntin' for his birthplace—he said:

"'Michael, I've drank too much, but it tasted good. After to-day not a drop I touch, an' me goin' back to America.'

"Sure, I hope he didn't, for he had a fine business of manufactures of some sort, an' he says:

"'Sind them along, Mike, when they does be old enough an' I'll give them good jobs. Only they must l'ave liquor alone.'

"Ah, a kind man he was an' a true American. Wance I met Larrd Kinmare, an' I took off me hat to him. 'Who's that?' says he. 'Larrd Kinmare,' says I. 'Why do you take off your hat to him?' says he; 'he's only a man like yourself.' I'll never forget that. Only a man like meself."

I asked this same jarvey if he would like to see home rule.

"Sure, better wages would be better."

There are many like him in Ireland, men of the practical kind, who would rather see prosperity than home rule, and who evidently do not believe the two are synonymous terms.

Perhaps a little more of this jarvey's talk will not be uninteresting.

"What do you think of King Edward, Michael?"

He looked at me seriously. "He's not had a thri'l yit, but he seems a nice man. When he was Prince of Wales he was here to visit with his mother, the Queen of England, and he wint to a nunnery, an' him a Protestant, an' he kep' his hat off his head all the time he was in. An' him a Protestant, mind you. He seems a nice man, but he hasn't had a thri'l yit."

There's simplicity for you. One need not have the acknowledged tact of the best king in Europe to keep off his hat in a nunnery, but Michael had treasured the anecdote forty years as the measure of a ruler's merit.

But I am treading on dangerous ground and it would be better to venture on fairy ground.

One needs to live long among the Irish peasants to get at their folklore. They are invariably agreeable to strangers, as Michael has shown himself to have been to me, and are more than willing to talk about America and the sorrows of Ireland, but if the subject of fairy folk is broached they seem to be anxious to change the subject.

I was fortunate enough to get a little insight into their beliefs, but before I touch on the topic I would like to scatter a few thoughts on the subject of Irish wit.

Here I have set down a conversation of a typical Irishman, but you will notice that there is nothing witty in what he says. In books he is witty, and in Scotland the Scotchman is witty, as I had occasion to notice many times last year when I was there, but in Ireland (I record personal impression) the Irishman is not witty, as I met him in the peasant class.

I have conversed with dozens and scarcely a witty reply have I had. Humor often, but wit seldom. I sometimes think that it is because I have used the wrong tactics. Perhaps if I had bantered them they would have retaliated.

I fancy that their reputation for wit is largely of English manufacture, and that the Englishman calls it forth by his undoubted feeling of superiority. The wit is at his expense.

We were passing a little opening in the woods the day I rode with Michael and I said to him:

"That would be a fine place for fairies."

He quickly turned his head and looked at me.

"So it would," said he, "but they're all gone now. Whin I was a boy the old folks did be talkin' of them, but there's none of them now."

"I suppose so," said I sympathetically, "but a friend of mine in Connecticut, an Irishman, told me he'd been led by them into a bog with their false lights."

"Oh," said Michael, quick as a wink, "so have I. They'd lade you to folly the light, an' the first thing ye'd know ye'd be up to your waist in a bog. But there's none of them hereabouts now."

And that ended Michael's remarks about fairies. And that was further than most of them would go until I met an old woman on the west coast. She, after I had gained her confidence, talked quite freely.

I asked her if she had ever seen any of the red leprechauns (I am not sure of the spelling) that are so mischievous to housewives and are so fond of cream, and while she had not seen any herself a friend of hers had seen two of them.

"Wan had a red cap on an' the other was dressed all in green and they was wrestlin' in a field.

"An wance I looked out of the winder," she had grown absorbed in her own talk now—"an' I saw over there on the mountain side a fair green field that never was there before"—the mountain was bald and rocky and bleak—"an' in it was a lot of young lads and gerruls, all dressed gayly, the lads and the gerruls walking like this"—illustrating by undulatory motions—"and full of happiness.

"Oh, yes; I've seen the little folk, but I don't mind them at all. The sight of them comes to me when I'd not be thinking of it, and it's little I care."

She tossed her head in evident superiority, perhaps feeling that I might think it folly for a woman as old as she to see things so out of the ken of an ordinary mortal. But I showed an interest that was perfectly genuine, and she went further into her revelations.

"Wance I was lookin' out of this same winder, an' a queen of the air came out of the heavens ridin' on a cloud. Oh, she was the most beautifully made woman I ever saw, with a stride on her like a queen.

"She had a short skirt on her, and her calves were lovely, and around her waist was a sash with a loose knot in it for a dagger, an' the dagger raised in her right hand—an' a crown upon her head."

"And did she look angry?"

"Indeed she didn't. A beautiful face she had, an' she come straight for this winder, an' when she was almost before it I put up my hands to my eyes, for I thought that if she was coming out of the other space and I was the first she met here she might do harm to me, and 'twas well not to look at her—and when I opened my eyes again she was gone.

A Side Street, Wexford

"Oh, never will I see so finely made a woman again; the calves of her beautiful legs, and the arm raised high above her head like a queen."

Margaret stood looking out of the window at the mountain opposite, and I said nothing for fear she would stop talking. After a few moments she went on:

"Wan day I saw an elephant over on the mountain side an' him filling his trunk, with water for a long journey—Oh, it's manny the thing I see, but I don't mind if I never see them, only they come to me."

Filling one's trunk with water for a long journey would not appeal to a drummer, but this flippant thought I did not extend to Margaret. Perhaps she would not have understood, as drummers are bagmen on the other side. That is they are bagmen in books. In hotels they are commercial men.

Margaret was not yet through telling me the things she had seen. I was told that there were some people that she would not talk to on occult subjects, fearing their badinage, but her sincerity was so evident that I could not have joked with her on the subject if I had thought of doing so.

"Wance I saw the present King Edward, an' him about to be crowned, an' he was in the heavens lying on a bed, and his wife standing near, dressed in a dress with short sleeves an' point lace on them, an' I said to me master,"—Margaret was living in service,—"'Sure he'll not be crowned this time.'

"An' that very evening the news came that the King was ill, and he was not crowned that time at all. An' the pitchers in the papers afterward showed the Queen in point lace as I had seen her."

Afterward I talked to the gentleman for whom this ancient woman kept house, and he said there was no end to the queer things she had seen. He told me that once she saw in "the heavens" a funeral cortége issuing from a smallish house, with big black horses, plumed and draped, and drawing a hearse, and in it either the pope or the queen.

"Some one high up," Margaret said.

That evening came the news of the death of Queen Victoria.

Of course this is "merely" second sight, but if you don't believe in such things you don't feel like scoffing when people see visions that come true.

I was unfortunate enough not to meet a Galway woman, an ignorant peasant, who saw a vision that shaped itself around a ruined castle.

She said to my informant (one of the leaders in the Gaelic revival) that while she was looking at the castle one day a band of young gentlemen on horseback and strangely dressed came riding up to the castle, and in the windows of it were many handsome women, gayly dressed and with their hair brushed up from their foreheads, and they were laughing and talking.

And when the young horsemen came to the ditch that was around the castle a platform that was laid against the wall was let down by chains, and over the bridge thus made the gay young men rode and joined the chattering ladies.

This was a woman who would not have heard of moats and drawbridges, and but little of the castle remained save the four walls. She had seen a vision, so my informant, a woman of forceful intellect, told me—and I believed it then, and half believe it now. If one has visions why not see them? I wish I might myself.

But it is very hard for the traveler to get at these revelations. The natives are shy of strangers, who like as not do not believe in fairies—never having seen Tinker Bell—and they will not talk.

But for my part I hope the time will come when it will be proved beyond a doubt that there are fairies, and if the revelation ever does manifest itself at all, doubting Thomases and the rest, I am sure that their habitat will prove to be Ireland.

And when they are proved to exist, remember that I said I believed in them.

CHAPTER XIII

In Galway with a Camera

GALWAY comes as near as any Irish city that I ever saw to rivaling New York's East Side for dirtiness, and yet a fair-minded observer would be compelled to tell Galway, when the time for awarding the leather medal came, that she was only a close second.

This does not so much mean that New York is dirtier than I realized she was when I was there as it means that Ireland is not as dirty as English and Irish and American writers have pictured it.

Perhaps in some parts of Ireland the pig still sleeps in the room with the family, but as a faithful chronicler of actual sights I cannot say that I saw such a sight in any of the numerous slums and villages I visited in twenty counties. I hate to destroy so poetic an illusion.

Picturesque Galway

There was something idyllic in the thought of a pink little pig and a pink little boy, the two of them the pink of neatness, lying side by side in a happy-hearted Irishman's cabin, while pig and boy and Irishman starved to death, but the truth was something better than that. There were pigs and little boys, but they were not neatly pink and they were not starving, and the old man did not swing a shillelagh or sing songs as I was passing by.

Shillelaghs were never so plentiful as they are now, but they are made to supply the foreign demand for them, and the Irishman is amused and perhaps a bit contemptuous as he sees Americans, with never a drop of Irish blood in them, buying shillelaghs to take home for the sake of sentiment.

I wish I might write that I saw evidences of destitution on every side—it would please the sentimentalists—but I did not. There were beggars, but not so many as I had feared I would see, and they did not chase me any harder than youngsters have chased me in City Hall Park in New York demanding a cent to buy sterilized milk.

In Sligo I was followed by a poor woman carrying a baby, and as she raised her hand for alms her shawl dropped off and disclosed her nakedness to the waist, but I was assured by a Sligo gentleman that she was a professional beggar from out of town, and that possibly the baby was not hers, and I know for a fact that she went to a public house with the money I gave her.

And all the time I was fumbling in my pocket for coppers she was wishing me happy days. She stands out in my recollection as the most abject beggar I saw.

But in Galway there is dirt and squalor and it is picturesque. There in the Claddagh one meets with old hags who are hideous enough and Spanish looking enough to have just left Velasquez's studio, where one can imagine them posing as models for some masterpiece of the great realist.

Barefooted they are, and the homely ones have a great desire to be photographed. Many and many were the pretty women I saw in Ireland, but my camera recorded but few of their lineaments, while I was asked more than once by plain women to take their pictures.

One nailed me as I was passing her vegetable shop in the Claddagh. She was cross-eyed, poor thing, and in a land where pretty features are as plentiful as blackberries, she was plain, but she besought me to take her picture.

Now, when a woman asks you to photograph her you don't feel like refusing her, and I was too much of a novice to make a feint at snapping the shutter and passing on, so I stopped and tried to see a picture in the carrots and cabbages that were displayed at the door.

Such a simpering, conscious face as she displayed! I tried to engage her in talk so that she would at least look naturally homely, but it was no use. Every time my finger strayed up to the little lever her lips would become set in a smile, one eye would look at the camera and one would look at me, and she would become the incarnation of consciousness.

At last I snapped her and passed on. After that I took good care to hurry past plain women.

The day before, at a railway station, I had gone in to get a bit of lunch and discovered that one of the waitresses was a little beauty. The thought came into my head, What a model for "An Irish Beauty," just as one of the others, who had no claim to beauty, said, "Take me picture?"

I told her that I was not a professional, looking all the while at the pretty one, but she suggested that I take all three waitresses just for fun, and in order to get the beauty at any cost I assented, and the girls stood in expectant attitudes.

A String of Fishermen, Galway

The beauty was so luscious looking that the other two were simply obliterated in the finder, and I felt myself lucky at having such a chance to carry away a permanent impression of Irish maidenhood.

My hand was raised to the lever, in another instant the face would be mine, but just then the door opened and a man came in to buy a measly sandwich.

One of the girls left the group—I could see that in the finder, but I snapped hastily and then looked up.

It was the beauty.

I have the other two. They are undeveloped.

In the Claddagh a pretty little child came up to me and asked me to take her "piccher," hoping for some coppers in payment.

I nodded my head to her, but a barefooted derelict ahead of me heard her request, and wheeling around suddenly bade the child be off and offered to pose for me herself.

Velasquez would have jumped at the chance, but I am not Velasquez and I shook my head and hurried on.

The vehemence of the old woman's vituperative assault on the little girl had collected a lot of loungers of both sexes, and I was besieged for pictures, the pretty little girl saying incessantly, "I as't you firrst. I as't you firrst. I as't you firrst."

I managed to make her understand that if she walked on far enough I would take her picture, and only one other heard her, another little girl who was pretty enough to grace a film.

These two kept on, while the others dropped away when they saw I was adamant.

And when my models were far enough from the others to enable me to get them before it was suspected what I was at I snapped them and put my hand into my pocket to get up a couple of coppers and found nothing but a sixpence.

Of course the children could not change it, and I could not very well divide it, so I appealed to some fishermen who were lounging on the quay, asking them if they could give me coppers for a sixpence.

They gave me to understand that both coppers and sixpences were strangers to them, and evidently felt that, as a "rich American" I could easily give each child a shilling. But this would have been to get the whole pack on me, for they already smelt money and were coming up.

So I gave the sixpence to the one who had first spoken to me and told her to keep fourpence for herself and to give tuppence to her little friend.

I'm afraid they came to blows over it. As for me, I left the picturesque Claddagh and saw it no more.

It was that same morning that I had seen the entire population lining one of the narrowest streets in that part of Galway, and there I got shot after shot of the picturesque groups.

I asked what they were waiting for, and one of the mackerel selling and barefooted Velasquez women told me that an American circus was coming.

I felt it was worth waiting to see an American circus in Galway.

The circus was called "Buff Bill's Wild West Show." Not Buffalo Bill, mind you, but Buff Bill.

For a long time I waited and at last my patience was rewarded.

I knew just what it would be. There would be fifty or sixty cowboys on their broncos, a bevy of female sharpshooters, and the Deadwood stage; and for the circus part of it an elephant or two and the $10,000 beauty, followed up by dens of wild beasts and representatives of all the countries of the world.

At last music was heard. The band was approaching. Around a bend in the street came the usual crowd of small boys and girls running ahead.

Then came a yellow wagon, with a cowboy band discoursing the latest New York favorite.

Waiting for the Circus, Galway

Next came one dreadful dwarf, made up as a hideous clown. Behind him rode an ordinary negro, not costumed in any special manner. He was enough novelty as he was.

And behind these two rode a man of the toothpowder vender type, with long hair, boiled shirt, sombrero, and no necktie.

He was Buff Bill.

And that made up the parade.

It was worth waiting for, if only to see what it is that constitutes a wondrous spectacle to a small boy.

Fifty years from now some prosperous Chicagoan will take his grandson to see a four-mile parade of some great circus of the period, with half a hundred elephants, a thousand noble horsemen, and scores of gilded chariots; and when the small boy voices his rapture the old man will say with sincerity:

"It's pretty good, I suppose, but you ought to have seen the circus that came to Galway when I was a boy of eight. That beat any circus I've ever seen since. I couldn't sleep for weeks thinking about it."

CHAPTER XIV

The New Life in Ireland

NO one can be in Ireland long without realizing that when sturdy, practical John Bull forcibly married dreamy Hibernia, with her artistic temperament, it was a very foolish marriage, and as a good American I could have predicted trouble from the very start. John Bull is accustomed to be obeyed at the drop of the hat, and Hibernia, for all her dreaminess, is a lady of spirit and will not become a willing slave.

John Bull has no more knowledge of the real needs and capabilities of this Irish wife of his than the average American has of the real needs and capabilities of an Indian, and the result of the union has been a series of bickerings that show John up in his worst light and that do not serve to call out the most agreeable aspects of his unfortunate wife's nature.

He suspects her, and what good woman will stand being suspected by her husband without resentment? In her temperamental qualities—qualities that could be cultivated to express something noble—he sees only idleness and shiftlessness. He treats his wife as a child, and the wife who is treated as a child becomes a mighty poor mother.

That Hibernia is a failure as a mother is shown by the fact that thousands of her sons are still willing and even anxious to leave her instead of staying and showing by their industry and sobriety and willingness to make the most of the opportunities that undoubtedly exist in Ireland, that they are capable of developing and governing their native land without interference of any kind from John Bull.

Ordinarily I'm quite opposed to divorce, and I know that Catholics abhor it, but it seems as if Hibernia ought to get a decree against John Bull on the plea of incompatibility of temper. And I wouldn't advise Hibernia to rush into marriage again after she gets her freedom.

But through what courts she is to get her decree is beyond my knowledge. She's a most attractive lady and she has fertile farms and some say undeveloped mines, and there is certainly land enough, setting aside the fact of ownership, to support all the sons who have stayed by her.

Every Irishman in America who loves Ireland, and I can't imagine that there are any who do not, ought to advise against further immigration. Ireland needs every able-bodied man to help carry on the work there is to do—a work that the Gaelic League is doing so much to foster.

The Gaelic League with its fostering of the artistic spirit that is dormant in the Irish nature, and that already finds expression in the weaving of rugs and in embroidery and in bookbinding and the making of stained glass, and the Irish Agricultural Organization Society, with its introduction of modern scientific methods of farming, its model hospitals and schoolhouses and dwellings—these movements are waking great interest among the younger people. And Ireland cannot afford to part with a single man or woman from now on.

The study of Gaelic increases year by year, and whereas in former times Irishmen, subdued by the English spirit, punished their children if they were caught talking Gaelic, now Irishmen encourage them and they are freely learning Gaelic in all parts of Ireland. This movement cannot help revivifying a national spirit.

In a railway carriage I talked with some young women who, with their brothers, were returning from a three days' fast and an all night vigil at a little village near Bundoran. They were of course Roman Catholics. They asked me if I was going to the national festival about to be held in Dublin, the Oireachtas, and when I found out what it meant I told them that I was, and asked them if they were members of the Gaelic League.

Gaelic Sign, Donegal

"Indeed we are," said one, and her eyes glowed with enthusiasm as she said it.

"And do you speak Gaelic?"

"Oh, yes. We've learned it, you understand, learned it since growing up."

They were heart and soul in the new movement that it is hoped will regenerate and cultivate and spiritualize Ireland, and while I was talking to them and felt their sincerity and ardor, I was sure that the Gaelic League was doing more than all the politicians ever could.

It is not the Catholics only that have joined this movement; it is non-sectarian. I talked with a young drug clerk in a northern town and he "had the Irish" (could talk Gaelic), and wrote his name in Gaelic characters, but he was a Protestant. He offered to give me a line to a well-known Dublin literary man, which shows how democratic the movement is.

To-day you'll meet with a land-owning aristocrat who is interested in what the league is doing, and to-morrow you'll meet a jarvey who is learning Gaelic, and the next day a young lady of gentle birth who is teaching the poor children of the neighborhood how to weave rugs, and then you'll meet an artist who was formerly a land owner and a Protestant, and who was one of the first to sell his property to his tenants under the Wyndham act—and being an artist and not a business man he got ruinous prices for it—and has been forced ever since to rely on his brush for his support. He, too, is heart and soul in the movement.

Now when the yeast permeates the lump to such an extent there is bound to be a rising—but of the peaceful kind.

"Pat," in his "Economics for Irishmen," says, "Were I a priest, I should, I think, regard it as a sin on my soul every time a young person emigrated from my parish while I might have shown him how he could have made an excellent living at home."

It must strike every American, no matter whether he is a Protestant, an atheist, an agnostic, or a Roman Catholic, so long as he is open minded, that the size and evident costliness of the churches in the country districts is out of all proportion to the costliness of the houses of the peasants.

In a poor community money that is put into costly bricks and stone that might have been put into books and bread is money inadequately expended, even if Ruskin rise from his grave to contradict me. A better temple to God than a granite church is a granite constitution, and the light of health and sanity and cheerful industry in the eye of an Irish lad is better than the light of a thousand candles.

This is not a question of religion, but of common sense. If all the money that has been spent upon the extra embellishment of churches of all denominations in Ireland had been spent on the physical and educational and moral betterment of Irishmen, they would have ceased to emigrate long since.

But this is thin ice, and as I can't swim I'll give up the skating on it until the weather is colder.

But the priests are also interested in this Gaelic revival of which Americans have already heard so much, and which is non-sectarian and non-political. And the nuns are doing a blessed work all over Ireland.

Let me close this somewhat serious chapter—one can't help being serious in Ireland when he sees that her regeneration is at hand—with a parable that I made all by my lonesome:

Once there was a man who had a sugar maple, and there being a demand for maple sugar he allowed the sap to run early and late, and disposed of the sugar thus obtained. But there came by a man who said:

Gone to America

"Why, you're ruining that tree. The sap that is being made into sugar for the whole United States is the life blood of that green old tree. If you keep on, your tree will wither and die."

And the man took the advice and the tree renewed its youth.

Close up the sap holes and keep in the sap, for the sap is the life blood of Ireland, and we in America have learned how to make sugar out of many things—even out of beets—and we no longer need the Irish young man. But the old tree needs her young blood in order to keep her fresh and green.

Transcriber's Note:

Archaic and inconsistent spelling and punctuation retained.

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Table of Contents

- JUST IRISH
- PREFACE
- ILLUSTRATIONS
- TABLE OF CONTENTS
- CHAPTER I
- CHAPTER II
- CHAPTER III
- CHAPTER IV
- CHAPTER V
- CHAPTER VI
- CHAPTER VII
- CHAPTER VIII
- CHAPTER IX
- CHAPTER X
- CHAPTER XI
- CHAPTER XII
- CHAPTER XIII
- CHAPTER XIV
- THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG™ LICENSE