most prolific of
poetry. He has composed a song which I am afraid will hardly please my
Irish Nationalist friends in America:

"We are sons of Sister Isles,
Englishmen and Irishmen,
On our friendship Heaven smiles;
Tyrant's schemes and Tory wiles
Ne'er shall make us foes again."

There is to be a Drawing-Room, too, at the Castle on Wednesday night.
One would not unnaturally gather from the "tall talk" in Parliament and
the press that this conjuncture of a great popular demonstration in
favour of Irish nationality, with a display of Dublin fashion doing
homage to the alien despot, might be ominous of "bloody noses and
cracked crowns." Not a bit of it! I asked my jarvey, for instance, on an
outside car this afternoon, whether he expected a row to result from
these counter currents of the classes and the masses. "A row!" he
replied, looking around at me in amazement. "A row is it? and what for
would there be? Shure they'll be through with the procession in time to
see the carriages!"

Obviously he saw nothing in either show to offend anybody; though he
could clearly understand that an intelligent citizen might be vexed if
he found himself obliged to sacrifice one of them in order to fully
enjoy the other.

Lady Londonderry, it seems, is not yet well enough to cross the Channel;
but the Duchess of Marlborough, who is staying here with her nephew the
Lord-Lieutenant, has volunteered to assist him in holding the
Drawing-Room, whereupon a grave question has arisen in Court circles as
to whether the full meed of honours due to a Vice-Queen regnant ought to
be paid also to an ex-Vice-Queen. This is debated by the Dublin dames as
hotly as official women in Washington fight over the eternal question of
the relative precedence due to the wives of Senators and "Cabinet
Ministers." It will be a dark day for the democracy when women get the
suffrage--and use it.

At luncheon to-day I met the Attorney-General, Mr. O'Brien, who, with
prompt Irish hospitality, asked me to dine with him to-morrow night, and
Mr. Wilson of the London _Times_, an able writer on Irish questions from
the English point of view. Mr. Balfour, who was expected, did not
appear, being detained by guests at his own residence in the Park.

I went to see him in the afternoon at the Castle, and found him in
excellent spirits; certainly the mildest-mannered and most sensible
despot who ever trampled in the dust the liberties of a free people.