THE IRISH YOLK.--In the name of the Profit--eggs! Irish co-operators
have already made giant strides in the production of milk and butter,
and now the Irish Co-operative Agency has decided, so says the _Cork
Daily Herald_, to "take up the egg-trade." We hope the egg-traders
won't be "taken up," too; if so, the trade would be arrested just when
it was starting, and where would the profit be then? "It is stated
that many Irish eggs now reach the English market dirty, stale, and
unsorted," so that wholesale English egg-merchants have preferred to
buy Austrian and French ones. Ireland not able to compete with
the foreigner! Perish the thought! A little technical education
judiciously applied will soon teach the Irish fowl not to lay "shop
'uns."
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Feathers in Scotch Caps.
"The railway race to the North, like the race across the
Atlantic, has placed beyond challenge that on land as well as
on sea Scotch engines break the record."--_North British Daily
Mail._
Did not Lord BYRON anticipate this when he wrote (in _Mr. Punch's_
version of his poem on "Dark Lochnagar"):--
Yes, Caledonia, thy engines _are_ scrumptious,
Though even in England some good ones are seen;
And, if the confession won't render you bumptious,
We sigh for your flyers to far Aberdeen!
But if Caledonia is inclined to boast about its locomotives, let it
ponder its tinkers, and learn humility. The Glasgow "Departmental
Committee on Habitual Offenders, Vagrants, &c.," reports that
the nomad tinkers of Scotland number 1702, and of these 232 "were
apprehended for some crime or other during the year." _They_ don't do
151 miles in 167 minutes, like the locomotives--no, they do a couple
of months in Glasgow gaol; and they break the laws instead of breaking
records. There are 725 tinker children, who get practically no
education. Bonnie Scotland, land of grandeur, where the thousand
tinkers wander, you must catch these children, and educate them! The
adult tinker may be irreclaimable, but at least the children should
have a chance of something better--a choice of being soldier, sailor,
tinker, or tailor, as they prefer. If, after all, they elect to tink,
tink they must.
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DR. JOHN RHYS, of Jesus College, Oxford, quite rose to the occasion
at the New Quay, Eisteddfod, and, in his presidential address, made
lengthy quotations in Welsh. "Na chaib a rhaw" must mean "nor cares
a rap." By the way, the _South Wales Daily News_, in reporting the
proceedings, finishes up by declaring that "the speech was listened to
with '_wrapt_' attention." As Mrs. MALAPROP remarked, "The parcel was
enraptured in brown paper."
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