hat the ruins should be properly matured.
No man with an educated taste for food will eat Stilton cheese which is
only half decayed. No educated tourist will take long journeys and pay
hotel bills in order to look at an immature ruin. The decaying mills of
Ireland have not yet reached the profitable stage of development. Their
doors and windows are still boarded up. Their walls are adorned with
posters instead of ivy. No aesthetic archaeologist has as yet written a
book about their architecture.

The Ballymoy mill was the property of Doyle. He bought it very
cheap when the previous owner, a son of the last miller, lapsed into
bankruptcy. He saw no immediate prospect of making money out of it, but
he was one of those men--they generally end in being moderately rich--who
believe that all real property will in the end acquire a value, if
only it is possessed with sufficient patience. In the meanwhile, since
buildings do not eat, and so long as they remain empty are not liable
for rates, the mill did not cost Doyle anything. He tried several times
to organise schemes by means of which he might be able to secure a rent
for the mill. When it became fashionable, eight or ten years ago, to
start what are tailed "industries" in Irish provincial towns, Doyle
suggested that his mill should be turned into a bacon factory. A public
meeting was held with Father McCormack in the chair, and Thady Gallagher
made an eloquent speech. Doyle himself offered to take shares in the
new company to the amount of L5. Father McCormack, who was named as a
director, also took five L1 shares. It was agreed that Doyle should
be paid L30 a year for the mill. At that point the scheme broke down,
mainly because no one else would take any shares at all.

A couple of years later Doyle tried again. This time he suggested a
stocking manufactory. Stockings are supposed to require less capital
than bacon curing, and, as worked out on paper, they promise large
profits. Doyle offered the mill for L25 a year this time, and was
greatly praised by Thady Gallagher in the columns of the Connacht Eagle
for his patriotic self-sacrifice. Another large meeting was held, but
once more the public, though enthusiastic about the scheme, failed to
subscribe the capital. A great effort was made the next year to induce
the Government to buy the building for a L1,000, with a view to turning
it into a Technical School. A petition was signed by almost everyone in
Ballymoy setting