The forty-mile run from Dublin to Rathdrum is by the very edge of the sea. The roadway has been cut high in the face of the cliffs that fringe the coast—sometimes piercing a projecting headland, sometimes spanning a deep gully, sometimes skirting a sheer precipice—and the view at every turn is very romantic and beautiful. The train pauses at Bray, and then, still hugging the coast, reaches Wicklow, where it turns inland and mounts toward the hills along a pleasant valley to Rathdrum, perched in the most picturesque way on the steep banks of the Avonmore, for all the world like an Alpine village.

Betty and I were the only ones who descended at Rathdrum, that day, and we were glad, for it is peculiarly true of a side-car that two are company and any larger number a crowd. The car was waiting, and in a few minutes we were off on the twelve-mile drive.

The road mounted steeply for a time, passed through a dingy village clinging to a hillside, and then suddenly emerged high above the lovely Vale of Clara. Far down, so far it seemed the merest ribbon, the Avonmore sparkled over its rocky bed; beside it, here and there, a thatched cottage nestled among the trees; and the greenest of green fields ran back to the hills on either side. Here the gorse began, mounting the hillsides in a riot of golden bloom, only to be met and vanquished on the highest slopes by the low, closely-growing heather, brown with last year's withered flowers, but soon to veil the hilltops in a cloud of purple. But the gorse was in its glory—every hedge, every fence, every wall, every neglected corner was ablaze with it; it outlined every field; the road we travelled was a royal way, bordered on either side with gold. "Unprofitably gay?" Betty hotly disputed it. For how could such beauty be unprofitable?

It was a perfect day, with the air magically soft and the sun just warm enough for comfort, and we sat there, mightily content, drinking in mile after mile of loveliness. Away across the valley, we caught a glimpse of Avondale House, a school of forestry now, but sacred to every Irishman as the home of Parnell. A little farther on, Castle Howard glooms down upon the valley where the Avonmore meets the Avonbeg—that "Meeting of the Waters" celebrated by Tom Moore. But it would take a far greater poet to do justice to that exquisitely beautiful Vale of Avoca, stretching away into the shimmering distance.

The road turned away, at last, from the edge of the valley and plunged into a beautiful wood, and we could see that the bracken was alive with rabbits. It was a game preserve, our driver said, and he told us to whom it belonged, but I have forgotten. I suggested that, when he had nothing better to do, it would be easy enough to come out and knock over a rabbit.

"They would be putting a lad away for six months for the likes of that," he protested.

"Surely no one would grudge you a rabbit now and then!"

"Ah, wouldn't they?" and he laughed grimly. "There's nothing the keepers like so much as to get their hands on one of us. Why, sir, 'tis a crime for a man to be caught on the far side of that wall. Not but what I haven't got me a rabbit before this," he added, "and will again."

We passed a gang of men repairing the road, and two or three others sitting along the roadside, breaking stone by hand, and wearing goggles to protect their eyes from the flying splinters; and our driver told us how the contract for keeping each section of road in shape was let each year by the county council to the lowest bidder, and the roads inspected at regular intervals to see that the work was properly done. Two shillings a day—fifty cents—was about the average wage. I suppose it is because stone is so plentiful and labour so cheap that the roads all over Ireland are so good; but one would be inclined to welcome a rut now and then, if it meant a decent wage for the labourers!

We emerged from the wood presently, and then, away to the left, our jarvey pointed out the high peaks which guard the entrance to Glendalough—and let me say here that the word "lough," which occurs so frequently in Irish geography, means lake, and is pronounced almost exactly like the Scotch "loch." Glendalough is one of the most beautiful and romantic spots in Ireland, and its story runneth thus:

In the year 498, the King of Leinster had a son whom he named Caomh-ghen, or Gentle-born, and whom to-day we call Kevin. The King had been converted by St. Patrick himself, and he brought his boy up a Christian; and Kevin had never the slightest doubt as to his vocation, but knew from the very first that he must be a priest. So he was sent first to St. Petroc's school in Wicklow, and then to his uncle, St. Eugenius, who had a school near Glenealy.

Kevin grew in grace and wisdom, and likewise in beauty, until a handsomer lad was to be found nowhere in Erin, and many a girl looked sideways at him as he passed, but he paid no heed. One of them, seeing him so fair and saintly, lost her heart to him entirely, and her head as well, for she grew so shameless that she followed him in his walks, pleading with him, touching his hand, kissing his robe—all of which must have been most embarrassing to that modest and retiring man. At last, one day, she waylaid him in a wood, and, hungry with passion, flung herself upon him.

There are two versions of what followed. One is that St. Kevin escaped by jumping into a bush of nettles, and cooled the damsel's ardour by beating her with a branch of them, whereupon she asked his pardon and made a vow of perpetual virginity. The other, and much more plausible one, is that, after the manner of women, she loved Kevin more desperately after he had beaten her than she had before, and that finally the Saint, worn out by a struggle in which he saw that he would some day be defeated, resolved to hide himself where no man could discover him, and betook himself to the wild and inaccessible spot where the mountains meet above Glendalough. There high in the side of the cliff above the lake, he found a crevice where he made his bed, and lay down with a sigh of relief for the first peaceful sleep he had had for a long time. Here is Tom Moore's rendering of the rest of the story:

Most biographers of the Saint hotly deny that he killed the fair Kathleen, and point out that he was far too holy a man to do such a thing, even in a moment of anger; but, on the other hand, Kathleen's ghost may be seen almost any night sitting on a rock by the lakeside, combing its yellow hair and lamenting its sad fate. What, then, are we to believe? My own theory is that when the Saint opened his eyes, that fatal morning, and found his tempter bending over him, he sprang hastily away, well knowing to what lengths her passion led her, and inadvertently brushed her off the narrow ledge of rock. The horrified Saint scrambled down the cliff as quickly as he could, but the too-impulsive girl was dead. A good many people will add that it served the hussy right.

This seems to me a reasonable theory; whether it be true or not, Saint Kevin dwelt seven years in his cave, after Kathleen's death, without being further disturbed. Then one day, a shepherd climbing down over the cliff searching for a lost sheep, came upon the holy man, sitting meditating in his cell, and hastened away to spread the news of the discovery of a new saint. Great throngs crowded the lake to get a glimpse of him, much to his annoyance, and besought him to come down so that they could see him better. This he sternly refused to do, and told them to go away; but finally he permitted them to build him a little chapel on a shelf of rock near his cell. That was in June, 536; but the number of his disciples increased so rapidly that the chapel soon proved too small, and at last an angel appeared to him and ordered him to found a monastery at the lower end of the lake. This he did, and it soon became one of the most famous in Ireland.

It must have been a picturesque place; for there was a special stone-roofed cell for the Saint, and no less than seven churches to hold the people, and a great huddle of domestic buildings to protect the students from the rain and cold, and finally a tall round tower, from which to watch for the Norse invader. St. Kevin himself died in the odour of sanctity on the third day of June, 618. What I like about this story of St. Kevin are the dates—they give it such an unimpeachable vraisemblance!

After his death, the monastery had a varied history. It was destroyed by fire in 770, and sacked by the Danes in 830 and many times thereafter; but the final blow was struck by the English invaders in 1308, when the place was burnt to the ground. Since then it has been in ruins, much as it is to-day.

As we drove into the valley, that lovely day in May, no prospect could have been more beautiful. To right and left, in the distance, towered the bare brown hills, very steep and rugged, with the blue lake nestling between. In the foreground lay the ruins of the seven churches, with the round tower rising high above them; and, from among the trees, peeped here and there the thatched roof of a cottage with a plume of purple smoke rising from its chimney. It was like a vision—like some ideal, painted scene, too lovely to be real—and we gazed at it in speechless enchantment while our jarvey drove us around the lower lake, under the shadow of the hills, and so to the little inn where we were to have lunch.

We were looking in delight at the inn, with its thatched roof and whitewashed walls, when a formidable figure appeared in the door—a towering young woman, with eyes terrifically keen and a thick shock of the reddest hair I ever saw. She was a singularly pure specimen, as I afterwards learned, of the red Irish—a sort of throw-back, I suppose, to the old Vikings of the Danish conquest. I admit that I quailed a little, for she was looking at us with an expression which seemed to me anything but friendly.

"Can we get lunch?" I inquired.

"You can," she answered, short and sharp like the snap of a whip, and she stood in the doorway staring at us, without making any sign that we should enter.

"Is it ready?" I ventured further, for the long drive had made us very hungry.

"It is not."

Let me say here that very rarely does any one of Irish blood say "yes" or "no" in answer to a question. When you ask the man at the station, "Is this the train for So-and-so?" he will invariably answer, "It is," or "It is not," as the case may be. When you ask your jarvey if he thinks it will rain to-day, his invariable answer is "It will not." I never heard an Irishman admit unreservedly that it was going to rain. But before I had time to ask the red-headed girl any further questions, she was hustled aside by a typical little brown Irishwoman, who asked us in and made us welcome. Lunch would be ready in fifteen minutes, she said; meanwhile, if we wished, we could walk to the waterfall.

Of course we did wish, and set eagerly forth past the end of the upper lake, across a bridge, past a great empty hotel which was falling to decay, and up a little stream to the fall. It is really a series of rapids rather than a fall, and only mildly pretty; but growing abundantly in the damp ground along the margin of the stream was what Betty declared to be the true shamrock—a very beautiful trefoil, evidently a variety of oxalis, and certainly much nearer our ideal of the shamrock than the skimpy plant shown us by the gardener at Clondalkin. We gathered some of it, and then hastened back—for we didn't want to be late for lunch. As we were passing the lake, we noticed an extremely dirty and unkempt individual, who looked like a vagabond, sitting on a stone, and as soon as he saw us, he jumped up and fell in beside us.

"Your honour will be goin' to St. Kevin's bed," he began.

"Where is the bed?" I asked.

"In the cliff beyant there, sir," and he pointed across the lake.

"How do we get to it?"

"Sure I'll carry your honour and your lady in me boat."

I looked at the fellow, and at the wide lake, and at the little flat-bottomed skiff moored to a rock near by, and I had my doubts as to the wisdom of entrusting ourselves to the combination. He read the doubt in my face, and broke in with voluble protests.

"Arrah, you must go to the bed, your honour," he cried; "and your honour's lady, too. 'Tis the place where the blessed Saint lived for siven years, and if you sit down in his seat you will niver have the backache, and if you lie down in his bed you will niver have any ache at all, at all, and if you make three wishes they will surely come true."

Betty and I glanced at each other. We were tempted. Then I looked at our would-be guide.

"Why don't you make three wishes yourself?" I asked.

"I have, your honour."

"Did they come true?"

"They did, your honour," he answered instantly. "I asked for a light heart, a quick wit and a ready tongue. Your honour can see that I have all of them."

My heart began to warm to him, for he was the first person we had met in Ireland who talked like this.

"Now just be lookin' at this, your honour," he went on, and led us to the side of the road where stood a cross of stone—the terminal cross, as I afterwards learned, which marked the boundary of the old monastery. "Do you see them marks? This large one is the mark of a horse's hoof, and this small one of a colt's; and 'twas by a miracle they came there. In the old time, there was a man who stole a mare and her foal, but who denied it, and who was brought before St. Kevin. The Saint placed the man in front of this cross and told him if he was guilty to be sayin' it, and if he was not guilty to be sayin' it; and the man said he was not guilty. And as he spoke the words, the shape of the hoofs appeared on the cross, and when the man saw them, he knew it was no use tryin' to deceive the Saint, so he confessed everything. And there the hoof-prints are to this day."

They certainly bore some resemblance to hoof-prints, and I could not but admire the ingenuity of the tale which had been invented to explain them.

"What happened to the thief?" I asked. "Did the Saint let him go?"

"He did not, your honour, for it was the law that he must be hanged. But before he died, he asked the Saint to grant him one favour, and the Saint told him to name it; and the man asked that he be buried in the same graveyard with the Saint himself, and that on his grave a stone be placed with a hole in the middle, so that, if a horse stepped over his grave, he might put out his hand and pull it in. The Saint kept his promise, and in the graveyard yonder you may see the stone."

As, indeed, we did; at least, there is a grave there covered by a stone with a large round hole in the middle.

"And now, your honour," went on our guide, as we came to the door of the inn, "you will be wantin' me to row you over to the Saint's bed, I'm thinkin'."

"What is the fare?" I asked.

"As much over sixpence as you care to give, your honour."

"All right," I said. "We'll be ready presently." And we went in to lunch.

We certainly enjoyed that meal, though I have forgotten its ingredients; but I have not forgotten the clean, pleasant dining-room in which it was served. And then we sallied forth for the visit to St. Kevin's bed.

Our guide was awaiting us, and helped us into his boat and pushed off; and at once began to recount the legends of the lake; how the fairies danced punctually at nine every evening, whenever there was a moon, while at eleven the ghost of the fair Kathleen sat on a stone and sang and combed her hair, and at twelve the wraith of a wicked sorceress struck blind by St. Kevin glided about the lake. I forget what else happened, but it was evident that any one spending a night there would not lack for entertainment. And he told us why no skylark ever sings in the vale of Glendalough.

It seems that when St. Kevin was building his monastery, he had a great number of workmen employed, and the rule was that they should begin the day's labour with the singing of the lark and end it when the lambs lay down to rest. It was summer time, and the larks began to sing about three in the morning, while the lambs refused to retire until nine at night. The workmen thought these hours excessive, and so complained to St. Kevin, and he listened to them, and looked at them, and when he saw their poor jaded faces and tired eyes wanting sleep, his kind heart pitied them, and he promised to see what he could do. So he raised his eyes to heaven and put up a prayer that the lark might never sing in the valley, and that the lamb might lie down before the sun was set; and the prayer was granted, and from that day to this Glendalough has been famous as

By the time all these tales had been told, we were across the lake and drawing in toward a high cliff on the other side; and suddenly somebody shouted at us, and, as the hills shuttlecocked the echo back and forth across the water, we looked up and saw two men clinging to the cliff about forty feet up. As our boat ran in to the shore, they came scrambling down and helped us out upon a narrow strand.

"The seat and the bed are up yonder," said our guide. "Them ones will help your honour up."

I looked at the perpendicular cliff, quite smooth except for a little indentation here and there where one might possibly put one's toe, and my desire to sit in St. Kevin's seat suffered a severe diminution, for I have no head for heights. I said as much and listened sceptically to the fervent assurances of the guides that there was no danger at all, at all, that they had piloted thousands of people up and down the cliff without a single mishap, glory be to God. I knew they were talking for a tip, and not from any abstract love of truth. But in matters of this sort, Betty is much more impulsive than I—as will appear more than once in the course of this narrative—and she promptly declared that she was going up, for the chance to be granted three wishes was too good to be missed. So up she went, one man pulling in front and the other guiding her toes into those little crevices in the rock; and presently she passed from sight, and then her voice floated down to me saying that she was all right.

Of course I had to follow, if I was to escape a lifetime of derision, and after a desperate scramble, I found her sitting on a narrow ledge at the back of a shallow cave in the cliff, with her eyes closed, making her three wishes. Then I sat down and made mine; and then the guides offered to conduct us to St. Kevin's bed, but when I found that the bed was a hole in the cliff into which one had to be poked feet first, and that to get to it one had to walk along a ledge about three inches wide, I interposed a veto so vigorous that it prevailed.

Having got up, it was necessary to get down, and when I looked at the cliff, I understood why St. Kevin had stayed there seven years. The method of descent is simply to sit on the edge and slide over and trust to the man below. Fortunately he was on the job, so we live to tell the tale. As to the efficacy of the seat, I can only say that two of my three wishes came true, which is a good average. I don't know about Betty's, for it breaks the charm to tell!

I asked our boatman afterwards why he didn't pilot his passengers up the cliff himself, and so earn the extra sixpence which is the fee for that service; and he told me that he couldn't because that was an hereditary right, controlled by one family, in which it had been handed down for generations. The father trains his sons in the precise method of handling the climbers, so that they become very expert at it, and there is really no great danger. One member of the family is always on the lookout above the cliff, and when any visitor approaches, two members climb down to offer their services. Our boatman added that he wished he belonged to the family, because in good seasons they made a lot of money.

We pushed out into the lake again, and rowed up a little farther to another narrow beach, whence a rude flight of steps led to a shelf of rock many feet above the lake, on which are the ruins of St. Kevin's first little church. There is not much left of it, which is natural enough since it was built nearly a thousand years before America was discovered; but I took the picture of it which is reproduced opposite the next page, and which gives a faint idea of the beauty of the lake.

All during the afternoon, I had been conscious, at intervals, of a dull rumbling among the hills, and as we pushed out from the shore, I heard it again, and asked the boatman if it was thunder, for the clouds had begun to bank up along the horizon, and I remembered that we had twelve miles to ride on a side-car before we reached the station. But he said that it wasn't thunder; there was an artillery camp many miles away among the hills and the rumbling was the echo of the guns. He also assured me, after a look around, that it wouldn't rain before morning. The basis of an Irish weather prediction, as I have said before, is not at all a desire to foretell what is coming, but merely the wish to comfort the inquirer; but in this case the prediction happened to come true.

When we got back to the inn, we found a new arrival, a very pleasant woman who had come over in the coach from Dublin. Her husband, I learned, was an inspector employed by the National Education Board, who had come to Glendalough to inspect the schools in the neighbourhood. He had started out to inspect one at once, but when he returned I had a most interesting talk with him concerning education in Ireland, and the problems which it has to face.

The Irish schools, like everything else Irish, are controlled by a central board which sits at Dublin Castle. There are sixty-six other boards and bureaus and departments sitting there, each dealing with some special branch of Irish affairs, and all of them are costly and complicated. These sixty-seven varieties must cause a pang of envy in the breast of our own Heinz, for that is ten more than he produces! The particular board which controls the schools is called the National Education Board, and, like all the others, it is in no way responsible to the Irish people. In fact, it isn't responsible to anybody. Its members are appointed for life, and it is virtually a self-perpetuating body, for vacancies are usually filled in accordance with the recommendation of a majority of its members. It is absolutely supreme in Irish educational affairs.

The elementary schools in Ireland are known as "National Schools," and each of them is controlled by a local manager, who is always either the priest or the rector of the parish—the priest if the parish is largely Roman Catholic, the rector if it is largely Protestant. If there are enough children, both Catholic and Protestant, to fill two schools, there will be two, and the two creeds will be separated. This is always done, of course, in the cities, and in the north of Ireland there are separate schools for the Presbyterians; but in the country districts this cannot be done, so that, whatever the religious complexion of the school, there will always be a few pupils of the other denomination in it. In the villages where there is a church, as at Clondalkin, the school is usually connected with the church and in that case, if it is Roman Catholic, the teachers will be nuns.

The local manager of the school has absolute authority over it. He employs and dismisses the teachers; he prescribes the course of study; no book which he prohibits may be used in the school; any book, within very wide limits, which he wishes to use, he may use; he determines the character of the religious instruction. If he is a Catholic, this is, of course, Catholicism; if he is a Protestant, it is Protestantism—which means in Ireland either Presbyterianism in the north or Church of Irelandism in the south and west. But, as a very noted preacher remarked to me one evening, if he should happen to be a Mohammedan, he would be perfectly free to teach Mohammedanism.

The secular instruction given in the schools is supposed not to be coloured by religion, but it is inevitable that it should be; and this is especially true of Ireland, in whose history religious differences have played and still play so large a part. The result is that the memory of old wrongs, far better forgotten, is kept alive and flaming; and not only that, but the wrongs themselves are magnified and distorted out of all resemblance to the truth. Some one has remarked that half the ill-feeling in Ireland is caused by the memory of things that never happened; and furthermore such atrocities as did occur in some far distant day are spoken of as though they happened yesterday. To every Catholic, Limerick is still "The City of the Violated Treaty," although the treaty referred to was made (and broken) in 1691, and Catholics have long since been given every right it granted them. In Derry, the "siege" is referred to constantly as though it were just over, though as a matter of fact it occurred in 1689. To shout "To hell with King Billy!" is the deadliest insult that Catholic can offer Protestant, though King Billy, otherwise William III of Orange, has been dead for more than two centuries. And when one asks the caretaker of any old ruin how the place came to be ruined, the invariable answer is "'Twas Crummell did it!" although it may have been in ruins a century before Cromwell was born.

A certain period of every day, in every National School, is set apart for religious instruction. When that period arrives, a placard on the wall bearing the words "Secular Instruction," is reversed, displaying the words "Religious Instruction" printed on the other side. Then everybody in the schoolhouse who does not belong to the denomination in which religious instruction is to be given is chased outside. Thus, as you drive about Ireland, you will see little groups of boys and girls standing idly in front of the schoolhouses, and you will wonder what they are doing there.

They are waiting for the religious instruction period to be ended.

No Protestant child is permitted to be present while Catholic instruction is going on, and no Catholic child while Protestant instruction is being given. The law used to require the teacher forcibly to eject such a child; but this raised an awful rumpus because, of course, both Catholics and Protestants are anxious to make converts, and the teachers used to say that they had conscientious scruples against driving out any child who might wish to be converted. So the law now requires the teacher to notify the child's parents; and the result is, I fancy, very painful to the child.

All of which, I will say frankly, seems to me absurd. I do not believe that religious and secular instruction can be combined in this way, especially with a mixed population, without impairing the efficiency of both. The first real struggle the Home Rule Parliament will have to face, in the opinion of my friend the inspector, is the struggle to secularise education. And this, he added, will not be a struggle of Protestant against Catholic, but of clerical against anti-clerical, for, while religious instruction is a far more vital principle with the Catholic church than with the Protestant church, Protestant preachers in Ireland are just as jealous of their power over the schools and just as determined to retain it, as the Catholic priests. The influence of the clergy in Ireland is very great, and I am inclined to think they will win the first battle; but I also think that they are certain to lose in the end.

The General Education Board keeps in touch with the local schools by employing inspectors, who visit them three times a year and report on their condition. These visits are supposed to be unexpected, but, as a matter of fact, they seldom are.

"Word always gets about," my informant explained, with a smile, "that we are in the neighbourhood, and of course things are furbished up a bit."

"I should like to visit some of the schools," I said.

"You are at perfect liberty to do so. Any orderly person has the right to enter any school at any time."

"It is the poor little schools I wish to see," I added.

"You will find plenty of them in the west of Ireland—in fact, that is about the only kind they have there. And you will probably scare the teacher out of a year's growth when you step in. He will think you are an inspector, or a government official of some kind, who has heard something to his discredit and has come to investigate."

"Something to his discredit?" I repeated.

"Perhaps that he doesn't try to make the children in his district come to school. That is one great fault with our system. We have a compulsory education law, and every child in Ireland is supposed to go to school until he is fourteen. But no effort is made to enforce it, and not over half the children attend school with any sort of regularity. Often, of course, their parents need them; but more frequently it is because the parents are so ignorant themselves that they don't appreciate the value of an education. That isn't their fault entirely, for until thirty or forty years ago, it was practically impossible for a Catholic child to get any education, since the schools were managed by Protestants in a proselytising spirit and the priests would not allow Catholic children to attend them.

"I have some of the old readers that were used in those days," went on the inspector, with a smile, "and I wish I had them here. They would amuse you. In one of them, the Board cut out Scott's lines,

"Ah, well, those days are over now, and they don't try to make a happy English child out of an Irish Catholic any longer. The principal trouble now is that there isn't enough money to carry on the schools properly. Many of the buildings are unfit for schoolhouses, and the teachers are miserably paid. The school-books are usually poor little penny affairs, for the children can't afford more expensive ones. We visit the schools three times a year and look them over, but there isn't anything we can do. Here is the blank we are supposed to fill out."

The blank was a portentous four-page document, with many printed questions. The first section dealt with the condition of the schoolhouse and premises, the second with the school equipment, the third with the organisation, and so on. As might be expected, many of the questions have to do with the subject of religious instruction. Here are some of them:

The "Religious Instruction Certificate Book"—note the reverent capitals—is the book in which the religion of each child is certified to by its parents, so that there can be no controversy on the subject, and in which the child's attendance is carefully entered. There is also a Punishment Book, in which the teacher, when a child is punished, must enter the details of the affair for the inspector's information; and an Observation Book, in which the inspector is supposed to note suggestions for the teacher's guidance; as well as records of attendance and proficiency, and all the usual red tape of the Circumlocution Office. I have never seen any of these books, but I fancy that, with the exception of the first-named, few teachers spend much time over them.

As I have said before, the local manager has absolute control of the school, and the poverty of the school funds is sometimes due to his desire to keep this power wholly in his own hands. The government grant is intended only as a partial support, and is supposed to be supplemented by a local contribution. But frequently no local contribution is asked for or desired, because, if one was made, the persons who made it would rightfully claim some voice in the management of the school. I have heard queer tales of managers' eccentricities. One of them read somewhere of the high educational value of teaching children to fold paper in various shapes, and so had the children in his school devote an hour every day to this exercise. It was popular with the children, but the indignation of their parents may be imagined. They were, however, quite powerless to do anything except raise a row. Another, who believed that the highest function of education was to develop the Æsthetic consciousness, had the children in his school arrange rags of various colours in symphonies, and the people in his parish nearly went mad with rage.

But these, of course, were exceptions. As a rule, the course of study is utilitarian and humdrum enough, and the only colour the manager injects into it is that of religion. I note that the subjects of study mentioned in the inspector's blank are oral and written English, history, arithmetic, geography, object lessons and elementary science, cookery and laundry work, singing, drawing, needlework, and training of infants. This sounds ambitious enough, but I fancy it is mostly blarney, so far as the small schools are concerned, at any rate. About all most of them do is to teach the children to read and write and cipher—and these most haltingly. Twenty per cent of the people in western Ireland are still unable to do even that.

"You are a Nationalist, I suppose?" I said, after I had finished looking through the blank.

"I am," he assented emphatically.

"Why?" I asked.

"Because it is bad for Ireland to be treated like a spoiled child. That is the way England treats us now—we can get anything we want if we yell loud enough. And it's bad for England, too. She has problems enough of her own, heaven knows, but all she can think about is Ireland. Every sensible Englishman will be glad to get rid of us, so his government can have a little time to attend to its own affairs. What Ireland needs is to be chucked overboard and told to sink or swim. We'll swim, of course, but the shore's a long way off, and it will be a hard pull; but the harder it is, the closer we Irishmen will be drawn together. Home Rule won't bring any shower of blessings—it's more apt to bring hardships for a while; but it will give us a chance to stop thinking about our wrongs, and go to work to make Ireland a country worth living in."

The time had come for us to take our leave, and the inspector and his wife walked with us, for half a mile or so, along a beautiful path through the woods on the other side of the lower lake, and finally, with many expressions of good-will, bade us good-bye. We went on again, to the ruins of St. Kevin's seven churches, with the round tower looming high above them, while all about are the mounds and slabs of the old graveyard. All the churches are little ones—mere midgets, some of them—and they are in all states of preservation, from a few fragments of wall to the almost perfect "St. Kevin's Kitchen"—a tiny structure with high stone roof, which was set apart for the Saint's use, and which was so solidly built that it passed unharmed through the many burnings and sackings of the monastery, and still stands intact, defying the centuries. There is a queer little tower at one end of it, and a chamber above between the vault and the high roof; but most of these pre-Norman churches are small and bare of ornament, and remarkable only for their great age.

We spent some time in the graveyard, looking at the crosses and ornamented tombstones, and sculptured fragments lying about, and then we inspected the round tower; but my picture of it looks like a silhouette against the sunset sky; and finally we went on to the road, where our car was waiting. As we swung along through the fresh, cool air of the evening, we drew our jarvey into talk. He was very pessimistic about the state of the country, and apparently did not believe that Home Rule would help it much. There was no chance, he said, for a man to get ahead. It was a hard struggle for most of them to get enough to eat and a place to sleep and a few clothes to wear. A little sickness or bad luck, and there was nothing left but the workhouse—the workmen's insurance act did not include men like him. His own wages were ten shillings ($2.40) a week, and there were many who could not earn even that. On ten shillings—eked out by such tips as he picked up from his passengers—he managed to clothe and feed himself, but that was all. Marriage was not to be thought of; there was no hope of saving money enough to go to America; in fact, there was no hope of any kind. But though he spoke bitterly enough, he didn't seem unreasonably cast down, and I dare say spent little time thinking about his hard fate except when some passing Americans like ourselves reminded him of it.

And at last, just as dusk was falling, we wound down into the valley at Rathdrum; and presently our train came along; and an hour later we were again walking along O'Connell Street. It was long past nine o'clock, but not yet dark.