riends, and we buried the
poor lady at four in the morning."

The laziness of the Irish people was here exploited with advantage. A
great French chief of police, who had made elaborate dispositions to
meet a popular uprising, once said, "Send the police home and the
military to their barracks. There will be no Revolution this evening
on account of the rain." A very slight shower keeps an Irishman from
work, and you need not rise very early to get over him. A police
officer at Gort said to me, "The people are quiet hereabouts, but I
couldn't make you understand their ignorance. They do just what the
priest tells them in every mortal thing. They believe that unless they
obey they will go to Hell and endure endless torture for ever. They
believe that unless they vote as they are told they will be damned to
all eternity. But oh! if you could see their laziness. They lie abed
half the day, and spend most of the rest in minding other people's
business. Before you had been in the town half-an-hour every soul in
the place was discussing you. They thought you had a very suspicious
appearance, like an agent or a detective or something. Laziness and
ignorance, laziness and ignorance, that's what's the matter with
Ireland."

The farmers of this truly rural district distinctly state that they do
not want Home Rule. They only want the land, and nearly all are
furnished with Tim Healy's statement that "The farmer who bought his
own land to-day would, when a Home Rule Parliament was won, be very
sorry that he was in such a hurry." Just as the men of Bodyke are
getting the rifles for which Mr. Davitt wished in order to chastise
the Royal Irish Constabulary, by way of showing these "ruffians, the
armed mercenaries of England, that the people of Ireland had not lost
the spirit of their ancestors." Well may a timid Protestant of Gort
say, "These men are deceiving England. They only want to get power,
and then they will come out in their true colours. All is quiet here
now, but the strength of the undercurrent is something tremendous. The
English Home Rulers may pooh-pooh our fears, but they know nothing
about it. And, besides, _they_ are quite safe. That makes all the
difference. The change will not drive them from all they hold dear. I
do not agree with the nonsense about cutting our throats in our beds.
That speech is an English invention to cast ridicule on us. But we
shall have to clear out of this. Life will be unendurable with an