ar himself. The avenue, or as they say in England the drive, that
went from the hall door through a clump of big trees to an insignificant
gate and a road bordered by broken and dirty cottages, was but two or
three hundred yards, and I often thought it should have been made to wind
more, for I judged people's social importance mainly by the length of
their avenues. This idea may have come from the stable-boy, for he was my
principal friend. He had a book of Orange rhymes, and the days when we
read them together in the hay-loft gave me the pleasure of rhyme for the
first time. Later on I can remember being told, when there was a rumour
of a Fenian rising, that rifles had been served out to the Orangemen and
presently, when I had begun to dream of my future life, I thought I would
like to die fighting the Fenians. I was to build a very fast and beautiful
ship and to have under my command a company of young men who were always
to be in training like athletes and so become as brave and handsome as the
young men in the story-books, and there was to be a big battle on the
sea-shore near Rosses and I was to be killed. I collected little pieces of
wood and piled them up in a corner of the yard, and there was an old
rotten log in a distant field I often went to look at because I thought it
would go a long way in the making of the ship. All my dreams were of
ships; and one day a sea captain who had come to dine with my grandfather
put a hand on each side of my head and lifted me up to show me Africa, and
another day a sea captain pointed to the smoke from the Pern mill on the
quays rising up beyond the trees of the lawn, as though it came from the
mountain, and asked me if Ben Bulben was a burning mountain.

Once every few months I used to go to Rosses Point or Ballisodare to see
another little boy, who had a piebald pony that had once been in a circus
and sometimes forgot where it was and went round and round. He was George
Middleton, son of my great-uncle William Middleton. Old Middleton had
bought land, then believed a safe investment, at Ballisodare and at
Rosses, and spent the winter at Ballisodare and the summer at Rosses. The
Middleton and Pollexfen flour mills were at Ballisodare, and a great
salmon weir, rapids and a waterfall, but it was more often at Rosses that
I saw my cousin. We rowed in the river mouth or were taken sailing in a
heavy slow schooner yacht or in a big ship's boat that had been rigged and
decked. There