A TRIP THROUGH WONDERLAND
YOU may well believe that, with such variegated loveliness all about us,
we did not linger in the hotel a moment longer than was necessary, but
made a hasty tea and sallied forth to explore the neighbourhood. First
of all, Betty must pick some fuchsias, so we went back to the road, and
climbed over a wall into a field surrounded by high hedges of the
gorgeous flower. It was a new experience for Betty to reach up overhead
and break off great branches which were simply masses of scarlet bells,
until she had her arms full, and I suspect she went a little wobbly over
it; but she was to have the same experience many times thereafter, for
the fuchsia grows in great profusion throughout southern and western
Ireland.
I saw but one variety, however, the flower of which has a dark blue
trumpet and scarlet bell, but this is perhaps the most showy of all, and
nothing could be more gorgeous than a hedge in full bloom. In the woods,
or in gardens where they are left untrimmed, the bushes will grow into
veritable trees, twenty-five or thirty feet high.
We went back to the hotel, when Betty had gathered all she could carry,
and she sent the flowers up to our room by a maid who laughed
sympathetically--I fancy she had seen such attacks of madness more than
once before--and then we started along a winding path which led through
the woods down to the shore of the bay. And we soon found that fuchsias
were not the only things which grow to giant proportions here, for the
path was hedged with ferns four or five feet high--great, lordly
fellows, standing stiffly upright as though on parade. Ferns were
everywhere, even on the trees overhead, for the trees are padded with
moss, and in this the ferns have found a foothold. And there were holly
trees still scarlet with last year's berries, and hawthorn fragrant with
bloom; and over everything the English ivy ran riot--rather in the same
fashion, I thought as I looked at it, in which England herself has run
riot over Ireland.
We got down to the shore of the bay, at last, and I quite agree with
Thackeray that it is a world's wonder, with its rock-strewn shore and
emerald islands and pellucid water, framed in, all about, by rugged
mountains. We wandered along its edge, gay with sea-pinks, for an hour
or more, and then spent another hour loitering in the woods, and finally
walked on, between the flaming hedges and fern-draped trees, to the
little village, which we could smell, long before we came to it, by the
tang of peat-smoke in the air. It is a mere huddle of low, thatched
houses, and I judge that, even amid these gorgeous surroundings, life
can be as hard and sordid as anywhere in Ireland.
A little distance from the village was a pretty, two-storied villa,
covered with roses and climbing vines, and with a large garden beside
it, blazing with a great variety of gorgeous bloom. We stopped to look
at it over the gate, and the gardener espied us and came hurrying
forward to ask us in to see the flowers. And one of the plants he
showed us most proudly was a single, sickly-looking stalk of Indian
corn, about a foot high, growing in a pot. When we told him that, in the
state we came from, Indian corn filled thousands and thousands of acres
every summer, and grew from eight to ten feet high, he looked as though
he scarcely believed us. But that little stalk of corn brought home to
me, as perhaps nothing else could have done, the fact that my own
particular corner of the earth is divinely favoured, too, in ways
unknown even to Glengarriff.
* * * * *
I had a most improving conversation, that night, in the smoking-room of
the hotel, with a Catholic priest and a salesman for the British
Petroleum Company. The priest, who must have been at least sixty-five,
had the typical long, thin Irish face, and was intensely Nationalist.
The salesman was younger and rather rubicund, and I judge that he was an
Englishman and a Unionist. It was the priest who did most of the talking
about Home Rule, after I got him started, and he protested earnestly
that Ulster's fears of unfair treatment were utterly unfounded. The
Catholics, he said, didn't want supremacy; all they wanted was equality,
but they _did_ want that, and felt they were entitled to it. England, he
admitted, had made great strides within the past ten years toward
atoning for her old injustice to Ireland, and was evidently trying hard
to do what was right.
"Yes," broke in the salesman; "she's going altogether too far. What with
old age pensions and the purchase act and poor relief and railway
building and putting up labourers' houses and what not, she's spending
twice as much on this country as she gets out of it. It won't do; it has
got to stop."
"I don't believe England spends more on Ireland than she gets out of
us," said the priest quickly.
"Here it is in black and white," and the other triumphantly slapped the
paper he had been reading. "Imperial expenditures for Ireland, 1912-13,
L12,381,500; received from Ireland, L10,850,000; deficit,
L1,531,500--that would be about seven and a half million dollars," he
added, for my benefit. "Over a million and a half pounds sterling that
England has made Ireland a present of in the past year! What do you
think of that?" and he turned back to the priest.
"The figures may be true," said the latter, slowly, "and then again they
may not. I have been told that England burdens Ireland with many
expenditures which don't belong to us. But in any event, I agree with
you that charity does us no good--it does us harm. We don't want
charity."
"Hm-m-m!" grunted the salesman sceptically.
"I'll admit," went on the other, "that there are and always have been
many Irishmen only too eager to take alms--more shame to them. There
have always been many ready to sell themselves for a good position under
government, and to sell their country too, if need be. We have our share
of patriots, but we have more than our share of traitors, I sometimes
think. But it isn't by them the country should be judged. What true
Irishmen want is the right to stand alone like men and fight their own
battles, and in fighting them, the north and south will forget their
foolish quarrel and become friends again as they should be. They aren't
half as far apart, even now, as some would have you believe. Most of
this talk about Ulster is the black work of men who make their living
out of it, who care nothing for Ireland, and take advantage of every
little by-election to stir the fire and keep the pot bubbling."
I remarked that this ceaseless agitation over elections was unknown in
America, where all the elections were held on one day, after which there
were no more elections for a year.
The priest stared at me in astonishment.
"Did I understand you to say," he asked, "that the elections all over
your country are held on the same day?"
"Yes," I said; "on a day early in November, fixed by law."
"I don't see how you manage it."
"It isn't hard to manage--it's really very simple."
"But where do you get enough police?"
"Enough police?"
"Yes. Here in Ireland, when we have an election, we have to send in the
police from all the country round to keep the peace. If we tried to have
all our elections on one day, there would be riots everywhere."
"What about?" I asked.
"I don't know--the people wouldn't know themselves, most likely; but
there's many of them would welcome the chance for a shindy, if the
police wasn't there. Isn't it the same in America?"
I told him I had been an election officer many times, but had never seen
any serious disorder at the polls.
"Aren't there many riots next day?" he asked.
"Why," I said, "the day after election is the quietest day in the year.
Everybody goes to work as though nothing had happened."
"I don't think there is much danger of riots," put in the salesman, "but
we couldn't have your system over here because with us a man has a right
to vote wherever he owns property and pays taxes, and if all the
elections were held on one day, he couldn't get around."
"Ah, yes," nodded the priest; "I did not think of that. How do you
manage it in America?"
"With us," I explained, "every man has one vote and no more."
Again his eyes goggled.
"Would you be telling me," he gasped, "that your millionaires, your men
of vast properties, have no more votes than the poor man?"
And when I told him that was so, I think he was by way of pitying our
millionaires, as men deprived of their just rights--as, perhaps, in some
respects, they are.
And then the salesman told me that he had been to America, as far west
as Kansas, where he had visited some friends. He had gone over, he said,
with that sort of good-natured contempt for everything American so
common in England, but he had come away convinced that there was no
country on earth to match it.
"The only thing I saw to criticise in America were the roads," he added.
"Why don't you take a leaf from Lloyd George's book? He has put a tax of
three-pence a gallon on gasoline used by pleasure cars, and this tax
goes into a fund for the upkeep of the highways, proportioned according
to the number of cars in each county. Gasoline used in commercial cars
pays a tax of three-ha'-pence a gallon. A great sum is collected in this
way, and the upkeep of the highways is thrown upon the people who do
them the most damage. If you'd do the same in America, your roads would
soon be as good as ours; and nobody could complain that the tax was
unjust."
I agreed that it was a clever idea, and I hereby call it to the
attention of our lawmakers.
"Well," said the priest, who had been listening attentively to all this,
"I am glad to know the truth about this tax. I had heard of it, and had
thought it another English exaction laid upon Ireland. Now I see that I
was wrong; for, as you say, it is a just tax."
And then he told us some stories of the old days, of famine and
persecution and eviction, of the hard fight for life on the rocky
hillsides, while the fertile valleys were given over to grazing or
ringed with high walls and turned into game preserves. There were
lighter stories, too, of the humorous side of Irish character, and one
of them, though I suspect it is an old one, I will set down here.
The southwest coast of Ireland, of which Bantry Bay forms a part, is one
of the most dangerous in the world, because of the rugged capes which
stretch far out into the ocean and the small islands and hidden reefs
which lie beyond. It is just the sort of coast where fish abound, and so
little villages are scattered all along it, whose men-folks fish
whenever the weather lets them, and at other times labour in the tiny
potato patches up on the rocky hillsides. Naturally they are familiar
with all the twists and turnings of the coast, and are always on the
lookout to add to their scanty incomes by a job of piloting.
One day the crew of a fishing-boat perceived a big freighter nosing
about in a light fog, rather closer inshore than she should have been,
and at once lay alongside and put a man aboard.
"Will you be wantin' a pilot, sir?" he asked the captain, who was
anxiously pacing the bridge.
The captain stared a moment at the dirty and tattered visitor.
"Who the devil are you?" he demanded, at last.
"Me name's McCarthy, sir. I'm a pilot, sir."
"A pilot!" and the captain looked at McCarthy again. "I don't believe
it."
"'Tis the truth I'm tellin' you, sir," protested McCarthy.
"Well," said the captain, "if it's the truth, you can easily prove it.
Let me hear you box the compass."
McCarthy was nonplussed. More than once, sitting over a pot of ale in
some public house, he had heard old sailors proudly rattle off the
points of the compass, but, though he remembered how the rigmarole
sounded, he had no idea how to do it, nor even any very clear idea of
what it meant.
"Faith, I can't do it, sir," he admitted.
"Can't do it?" roared the captain. "Can't box the compass! And yet you
call yourself a pilot."
McCarthy did some rapid thinking, for he saw a good job, which he could
ill afford to lose, slipping through his fingers.
"It's like this, sir," he said, finally, "in our small place, it's the
Irish we would be using, niver a word of English, and all the English
any of us knows is just the little we might pick up from bein' after the
ships. I can't box the compass in English, but I can box it in the
Irish, sir, if that will do."
The captain looked into the speaker's guileless eyes and also did some
rapid thinking. He knew no Gaelic, but he needed a pilot badly, and he
reflected that, in any language, it ought to be possible to tell whether
the compass was being boxed correctly, because the words would have to
follow each other with a certain similarity of sound, as north,
north-and-by-east, north-north-east, north-east-by-north, and so on.
"All right," he growled, "go ahead and let's hear you."
"My father," McCarthy began solemnly in his homely Gaelic; "my
grandfather, my grandfather's grandmother, my grandmother's grandfather,
my great grandfather, my great grandfather's grandmother, my great
grandmother's great. . . ."
"Hold on," shouted the captain, quite convinced. "I see you know how.
Take charge of the ship!"
And McCarthy thereupon proved he knew how by getting the vessel safely
past Cape Clear!
* * * * *
It was pouring rain, next morning, a steady, driving rain, which looked
as though it might last forever, and we were confronted by the problem
which so often confronts the traveller in Ireland, whether to go or
stay. To go meant the possibility of having the most beautiful drive in
Ireland obscured in mist; to stay meant a dreary day at the hotel, with
no assurance that the next day would be any better, or the next, or the
next. At last we decided to go.
Never after that was the problem so difficult, for we soon realised the
folly of permitting Irish rain to interfere with any plan. In the first
place, the rain is not an unmixed evil, for it is soft and fresh and
vivifying, and it adds mystery and picturesqueness to the most
commonplace landscape; and in the second place, it is very fickle,
begins unaccountably, stops unexpectedly, and rarely lasts the day
through. In fact, the crest of any ridge may take one into it, or out of
it, as we were to find that day.
So when, about ten o'clock, the bus came puffing up to the door, we
climbed aboard. The road, for a little way, wound up the valley of the
Glengarriff River, and then, striking off into the mountains, climbed
upward at a gradient that tested the power of the engine. Almost at once
we were in the mountain mist, soft and grey, eddying all about us,
whirling aside for an instant now and then to give us tantalising
glimpses down into the valleys, and then closing in again. Up and up we
went, a thousand feet and more, and at last we came to the crest of the
mountain range which divides County Cork from County Kerry. The road
plunges under the crest through a long tunnel, and then winds steeply
down into the valley of the Sheen.
Again there was a series of sharp and unprotected turns, just as on the
day before, and this time with the added complication of a slippery,
sloppy road; but I have never ridden with a more careful or more
accomplished driver than we had that day, and he nursed the heavy bus
along so quietly and with such easy mastery that no one thought of
danger. Gradually the mist lightened and cleared away, until we could
see the wide valley far below, with the tiny winding river at the
bottom, and the walled fields and midget houses. There was a succession
of such valleys all the way to Kenmare, and we finally rolled up before
the big hotel there just in time for lunch.
We walked down into the village, afterwards, and found it more bustling
and prosperous than any of the other small villages we had seen. This is
due partly perhaps to the tourist traffic, for Kenmare is a famous
bathing and fishing resort; but homespun tweeds are manufactured there
in considerable quantities, and at the convent scores of girls are
employed at lace-making, Celtic embroidery, wood-carving and
leather-work. The school is said to be one of the best managed in
Ireland, and I was sorry that we did not have time to visit it. We saw,
however, some of the Kerry girls in the street, and they were fully
handsome enough to give colour to the doggerel:
'Tis sure that the lads will be goin' to Cork
When their money is gone and they're wantin' to work;
But 'tis just as sure that they'll turn back to Kerry
For a purty colleen when they're wantin' to marry.
Kerry is a poor country and always will be, for it consists mostly of
stony hills, and though it is renowned for its scenery, no one except
the hotel keepers can live on that. Such little hill farms as have been
wrested from the rocks produce but scantily; so when there is a "long
family," as the Irish put it--and "long families" are the rule--one son
will stay at home to look after the old people, and the others will fare
forth into the world to search for a living. I hope it is true that they
come back when they're searching for wives. Otherwise the lot of the
Kerry girls, hard enough under any circumstances, would be harder still.
Nowhere in Ireland are there brighter eyes or redder cheeks.
[Illustration: THE BAY AT GLENGARRIFF]
[Illustration: THE UPPER LAKE, KILLARNEY, FROM THE KENMARE ROAD]
The rain was quite over by the time we were ready to start again, and
the mist had disappeared under the rays of the sun, so that we had the
benefit of the full beauty of the Kenmare River, which is really a wide
bay, as we ran close along its western bank. Then the road doubled back
from it, and presently the driver stopped at a spot where a narrow
footpath struck down into the woods, and advised us to take it, saying
that he would wait for us at its other end. In a moment we found
ourselves clambering down the side of a wildly-beautiful ravine, with
the roar of rushing water rising from below, and trees festooned with
ferns and ivy meeting above our heads. And then, high above us, we saw
the arch of a stone bridge; and quite suddenly we came out upon the
stream, the Blackwater, foaming over the rocks. It was at its very best,
from the heavy rain of the morning, and we stood there watching it,
fascinated by its beauty, as long as we dared.
We went on again close beside the shore of the bay, and in half an hour
came to Parknasilla, where there is another big hotel, set in the midst
of beautiful grounds, and with superb views opening on every side. The
climate here is sub-tropical, and the vegetation mounts to a climax
of riotous profusion, with palms and calla lilies growing in the open.
The bay, too, is very fine, with bluff, rock-strewn shores, and
innumerable green islets speckling its sparkling waters, and rugged
mountains closing in the distance.
Then again we were off, mounting steadily, steadily, winding under
beetling crags and above grey precipices; up and up, with the world
sinking away into the valley at our left, and the heathery, rock-strewn
heights soaring upward at our right; and finally, at our feet, opened
the wonderful panorama of the Brown Valley--brown bog, brown rock, brown
heather, mounting to the distant slopes of Macgillicuddy's Reeks. We
dropped down toward it, mile after mile; then up and up again, to the
crest of the ridge beyond--and there, far below us, lay the lakes of
Killarney, rimmed with green hills and dotted with green islands--the
most sweetly beautiful in all the world.
* * * * *
The loveliest general view of the lakes of Killarney to be had from
anywhere is as one drops down toward them along the Kenmare road. Their
individual beauties may, of course, be seen to better advantage closer
at hand; but from this height, the whole wonderful panorama stretches
before one. Right across the valley opens the Gap of Dunloe, with the
rugged Reeks on one side and the green clad Purple Mountain on the
other; below is the narrow, island-dotted, hill-encircled upper lake;
farther away is Muckross Lake, and far in the distance stretch the blue
waters of Lough Leane, the largest of them all. My advice is to take a
long look at it, for you will never see anything more lovely.
The road soon dropped among the trees, and our driver pointed out with
evident pride the Queen's cottage on the shore of the upper lake, built
a good many years ago in order that Victoria, on her tour of the lakes,
might have a fitting place in which to lunch, and which has never been
occupied since. Then the road ran close beside the border of the middle
lake, plunged again into the woods for a mile or two; and at last the
bus stopped before the inn where we intended to stay, and we climbed
down regretfully.
The inn was a long, two-storied building, standing a little back from
the road, and the porter who came running out to take our bags might
have stepped straight out of Pickwick, he was so fat, so jolly, and so
rubicund. I had some films I wanted developed at once, because I was
afraid the damp weather would affect them, and I asked him where I could
get it done.
"There's a man just this side of the village can do it, sir," he said.
"You will see his sign as you go along the road."
"How far is it?" I asked.
"The village is two mile, sir."
"Then it's less than two miles?"
"It is, sir."
I turned to Betty.
"We've got plenty of time before dinner," I said. "Suppose we walk in
and see the town."
And Betty, wotting little of what was before her, consented.
I put my films in my pocket, and we set off eagerly along the pleasant
road, past a little village, past a church with a graveyard back of it
and a Celtic cross high on the hillside above it, past a hotel or two,
around one turn after another, with green-clad hills mounting steeply to
our right and the blue lake lying low on our left. We met an occasional
cyclist, or a donkey-cart being driven home from market, or a labourer
trudging stolidly home from work, or two or three girls strolling along
with arms interlaced, exchanging confidences. And the air was very sweet
and the evening very cool and pleasant, and the sky full of glorious
colour--
"We must certainly have come two miles," said Betty. "What do you
suppose is the matter?"
"I don't know," I said, looking at my watch and noting that we had been
half an hour on the road. "Perhaps we'll see the town around the next
turn."
But we didn't. All we saw was about half a mile of empty road. We
covered this and came to another turn, and there before us lay another
long stretch of road. Determined not to give up, we pushed on, and came
to a bridge over a rippling little stream, which we learned afterward
was the Flesk, and we stopped and looked at it awhile and rested.
"We must be nearly there," I said encouragingly.
"What's bothering me," explained Betty, "isn't the distance we have to
go to get there; it's the distance we have to go to get back."
There was another bend in the road just beyond the bridge, and we turned
this, confident that the village would be there. But it wasn't. We saw
nothing but the smooth highway, stretching away and away into the dim
distance. I looked at my watch again.
"We've been walking nearly an hour," I said. "It looks as though we
might miss dinner, after all."
And just then there came the trot of a horse and the jingle of harness
along the road behind us, and a side-car drew up with a flourish.
"Would your honour be wantin' a car?" asked the jarvey, leaning toward
us ingratiatingly.
"We were told there was a photographer's just this side of the village.
Do you know where it is?"
"I do, your honour."
"How far is it?"
"'Tis just over there beyont. If you will step up on the car, I'll have
ye there in a minute. I'm goin' right past it."
Of course we got up. And, as the jarvey had said, the photographer's
shop was just around the next bend. But before I got down, I made a
bargain with him to drive us back to our hotel, and, after I had left my
films, we set merrily off through the gathering dusk.
"There's one thing I don't understand," I said, at last. "The porter at
the hotel said it was only two miles to the village. Yet we walked for
an hour without getting there."
"He meant Irish miles, your honour," explained the jarvey, laughing.
"There is an old saying that 'an Irish mile is a mile and a bit, and the
bit is as long as the mile.' You see, here in ould Ireland we always
stretch everything."
I have found since that the Irish mile is about a mile and a quarter;
but this is no real measure of its elasticity. More than once thereafter
we saw one mile stretch out to three; and we soon came to realise that
the Irish mind is extremely vague and inexact when it comes to distances
and directions.
We got back to the hotel to have our first view of what proved to be a
nightly ceremony. On a stand in the entrance hall was a huge platter,
and on the platter lay a huge salmon, and a card leaning against it
announced that it weighed fourteen pounds and had been caught that day
by Captain Gregory, and there were flowers all about it, so it's a proud
fish it should have been. There were five or six other salmon on a lower
table, each with a card giving its weight--anywhere from five pounds to
eleven--and the whole collection represented the day's catch of the
guests of the hotel.
For the hotel, being handy to the lakes, and clean and comfortable and
homelike, is a favourite resort of the fishermen who come to Killarney
during the salmon season. Every evening while we were there, as the
fishermen came in, tired and wet, with their boatmen tramping behind
them carrying the fish--if there were any--they were met at the door by
the rotund porter, his face beaming like a full moon--a red harvest
moon!--and the fish would be solemnly weighed, and the biggest would be
decorated with flowers and awarded the place of honour, and the others
would be grouped around it, and after dinner, the fishermen would stand
and look at them, their hands deep in their pockets; and later on there
would be a great bustle as the fish were wrapped in straw and tied up,
ready to be sent by parcel-post to admiring friends back home!
* * * * *
It was a cosmopolitan crowd which gathered that evening after dinner
about the big fireplace in the smoking-room, where a most welcome and
comforting wood fire blazed and crackled. The weather had turned very
cold, and Betty and I were dressed as warmly as we had been at any time
during the winter, though it was the fifth of June, and the papers were
running long columns about the fearful heat wave which had America in
its grip. There was a sturdy, red-faced old Scotchman in carpet
slippers, and a sallow, heavy-lidded ancient whom the others addressed
as "colonel," and just such a close-clipped, stiff-backed sporting
squire as is Canon Hannay's Major Kent, of near Ballymoy; and there were
two or three other Englishmen with no outstanding characteristic except
their insularity; and the talk was of flies and rods and casts, and
everybody was indignant at the suffragette who had rushed out on the
track and tried to stop the Derby; and there was a steady emptying of
tall glasses and a steadily-deepening cloud of tobacco smoke, and
everybody was very comfortable and cosy. And presently the old Scotchman
took pity on me as a mere American who knew nothing about the high
mysteries of sport.
"It must be a great pleasure for you to sit before an open fire like
this," he said.
"It is," I agreed. "There's nothing more pleasant than a wood fire."
"Ye may well say so. But of course in America you have nothing like it."
"Nothing like it?" I repeated, looking at him.
"Why no," he said. "You never see an open fire in America. All you have
is steam pipes running all around the room."
I looked at him again to see if he was in earnest; and then I tried
gently to disabuse his mind of that idea. But it was no use. Indeed, he
got rather huffy when I said I had never seen a room with steam pipes
running all around it.
The savage insularity of the average Englishman is matter for
never-ending amusement, once one has grown accustomed to his contempt.
He believes that all American men are money-grubbers, and all American
women social climbers, who chew gum and talk loudly, while their
daughters are forward minxes who call their fathers "popper," and that
men, women, and children are alike wholly lacking in culture and
good-taste. The peculiar thing about it is that he never for an instant
doubts his own good taste in telling one all this frankly to one's face.
This is no fancy sketch. My own opinion is that the average Englishman
has no genuine feeling of friendship for America, and his ignorance of
things American is abysmal. One day, on the boat coming home, a
well-educated Englishman whom I had got to know, asked me the name of a
man with whom I had been talking.
"That is Senator So-and-so," I answered.
"What is a senator?" he inquired.
I remember that one day Betty and I and two other Americans happened to
be driving through the Tyrol in a coach with two Englishmen, and they
began to discuss American railway accidents--a favourite topic with
Englishmen when Americans are present; and one of them remarked that it
was no wonder there were so many accidents in America, since when
Americans built a railroad all they did was to lay the ties along on top
of the ground and spike the rails to them. I asked him if he had ever
been to America, and he said no, and I advised him to run over and pay
us a visit some time. This huffed him.
"Ah!" he said. "But what you Americans would give for a king!"
"Give for a king?"
"Yes; you would give anything for a king. Then you could have a court
and an aristocracy, and some real society. You're sick of your limping,
halting, make-believe government, and you know it!"
We all four stared at him in astonishment, wondering if he had gone
suddenly mad. Then Betty got her breath.
"No," she said; "you're really wrong about that. You see we settled the
king question back in 1776."
The rest was silence.
But really Englishmen aren't to blame for their distorted ideas of
America, for they get those ideas from the English newspapers, and the
only kind of American news most English newspapers publish is freak
news. During that week, for instance, almost the only American news in
any of the papers was about the terrific heat-wave, about Harry Thaw's
escape from Matteawan, and about some millionaire who had taken
bichloride of mercury by mistake, and lived for ten days or so
afterwards, occupying the time very cheerfully in closing up his
affairs. After his death, one of the great London dailies published a
column editorial about the affair, reasoning in the most solemn manner
that his survival for so long a time could have been due only to the
remarkable tonic properties of the American climate.
With the Irish it is entirely different. In the first place, America is
to them the haven to which a million Irishmen have fled from English
persecution; and in the next place, their knowledge of the country comes
not from newspapers but from letters written by relatives and friends.
The letters are somewhat rosier, I fear, than the facts warrant, but
they establish a kindly feeling which makes every Irishman ready to
welcome the passing American as a friend and brother. The only trouble
is that he is also apt to regard him as necessarily a millionaire.
It is undoubtedly true that a large portion of the lower-class Irish
consider it no disgrace to beg from an American. Not that they are
habitual beggars, but when an American comes their way, they seem to
consider it a waste of opportunity if they do not apply for a small
donation. In tourist centres, such as Dublin and Killarney, they are
very persistent, especially the children, and will follow along for
minutes on end telling the tale of their poverty and distress in queer
bated voices, as though they lacked the strength to speak aloud. But
Betty accidentally discovered a cure for this nuisance, quite as
effective as John Minogue's, and I take pleasure in passing it on.
Like most other people who have lived together for a long time, we have
developed a lot of symbols and pass-words, without meaning to any one
but ourselves; and it has become a rather foolish habit of mine when we
are together and I see something I especially admire, to express my
admiration by uttering the single word "Hickenlooper." And Betty, if she
agrees, says "Oppenheimer," and we understand each other and pass on.
One day in Cork, a group of children were unusually annoying, and
followed along and followed along, until Betty, losing patience, turned
upon them sharply, pointed her finger at them, and said "Oppenheimer!" I
shall never forget the startled look in their eyes, as they stopped dead
in their tracks, stared at her for an instant, and then fled
helter-skelter. We decided afterwards that they thought she was putting
a curse on them. She tried it more than once thereafter, and it never
failed to work; so, if you are annoyed beyond endurance by juvenile
beggars in Ireland, turn upon them sharply, point your finger at them,
and say "Oppenheimer!"
And since I am giving advice, I will give one bit more before I close
this chapter.
Among the purchases which Betty had made in New York, just before we
sailed, was a small electric torch. I had derided it as unnecessary, but
she had insisted on bringing it along, and had put it in our
travelling-bag when we were sorting over our luggage in Dublin. The
first night at Thurles, in a dreary little room, with only the
flickering candle for a light, I acknowledged her wisdom, for the bright
glow of the torch was very welcome. Again at Glengarriff candles were
the only illumination, and that night at Killarney, when I got to our
room, I found her in animated conversation with the chambermaid by the
light of a single tallow dip. They were talking about America, I think,
and the maid's eyes were shining with excitement and her cheeks were
flushed and the beautiful soft brogue was rolling off her tongue, when a
sudden gust from the open window blew the candle out. Betty picked up
the torch from the dresser and pressed the button.
"Glory be to God! What's that?" cried the girl, as the glare flashed
into her astonished eyes.
"It's only a torch," said Betty. "It won't hurt you." And then, when I
had lighted the candle again, she showed the girl how it worked.
"Glory be to God!" she cried again. "The wonder of it! You would niver
be gettin' that in Ireland!"
"No; I got it in New York."
"Ah, 'tis a wonderful place," said the girl, reverentially. "No place
but America would be havin' such things as that!"
Now this is no doubt a libel upon Ireland, for I suppose one can get
electric torches there. At any rate, my advice is to get one
somewhere--a good one--and take it along in your handbag. This advice is
good for the continent as well as for Ireland, but it is especially good
for the latter, and the reason is this:
In the old days, when English prodigals wasted their substance on
castellated palaces, the Irish squire, being a wiser man, spent his
money on good wine and good horses--or, when he had no money, ran
light-heartedly into debt for them. As to his family mansion, he
contented himself with adding a wing from time to time, as it might be
needed, either because of the increasing number of his children, or the
widening circle of his friends. The result was a singular house, often
only one story high, never more than two, flung wide over a great deal
of ground, and of a most irregular plan. Such a house had many
advantages, for, as another writer has pointed out, "at one end of it
the ladies could sleep undisturbed, no matter how joyous the men were at
the other; there were no stairs to fall down; and the long narrow
corridors were pleasant to those who found it hard to direct their
devious steps."
But the time came when these hospitable Irishmen found themselves
overwhelmed by debt, their houses were taken from them, and many of
them, since they were too large for any private family, were converted
into inns. The traveller in rural Ireland will encounter more than one
of them, and will find those long, shadowy, zig-zag corridors eerie
places after night, unless he has a torch to light his steps. The doors
are not always fitted with locks, and if the window is kept open, an
intruder has only to step over the sill. We never had any intruder; but
had we had, I am sure one flash from the torch would have sent him
flying.