sleep under the same roof.

Members of Congress will be paid for their services. Gentlemen
wearing gloves only to have the privilege of shaking the
President's hand. The unwashed members to be paid at the door.

Pipes will not be allowed on the Opposition benches, nor may
any member take whiskey until challenged by the President.

Under no circumstances will a member be suffered to sit with
his blunderbuss at full cock, nor pointed at the President's
ear.

Our Ambassadors will be chosen from our most meritorious
postmen, so that they may have no difficulty in reading their
letters.

The Foreign Office will be presided over by a patriotic editor
who has travelled in New South Wales and is thoroughly
conversant with the language.

Instead of bulwarks, the island will be fortified with Irish
Bulls, our engineers being of opinion that no other horn-works
are so efficient.

To prevent heartburnings between Landlord and Tenant, a
Government collector of rents shall be appointed, and
Tenant-right shall include a power to shoot over the land and
at anyone on it.

And this was written half-a-century ago. It reads like
yesterday!

Oughewall, June 10th.

No. 35.--IN A CONGESTED DISTRICT.

This is the first station on the Balfour line which is to run from
Westport to Achil Sound--now in process of construction by Mr. Robert
Worthington, the great Dublin contractor, who has built about a
million pounds' worth of Irish railway, and who is of opinion that
Home Rule means the bankruptcy of Ireland, and that the labouring
population of the country would by it be compelled to emigrate to
England, bringing their newly-acquired skill as railway workers into
competition with the navvies and general working population. The seven
miles of line between here and Westport are not yet packed and
ballasted, and the ride hither on an engine kindly placed at the
disposal of the _Gazette_, was not lacking in pleasurable excitement.
The bogey engine kicked and winced and bucked and cavorted in a
fashion unique in my experience. She seemed to be exhilarated by the
pure mountain air, charged with ozone from the Atlantic main. Watching
her little eccentricities, it was hard to believe her not endued with
animal vitality. She walked the railway like a thing of life. She
ducked and dived and plunged and snorted and reared and jibbed like