ped for a moment," he replied.

"No," added the other, "nor ever a dog poisoned. They were poisoned,
whole packs of them, in the papers, but not a dog really. The stories
were printed just to keep up the agitation, and the farmers winked at it
so as not to be 'bothered.'"

Both averred that they got their rents "fairly well," but both also said
that they farmed much of their own land. One, a wiry, energetic, elderly
man, of a brisk presence and ruddy complexion, said he constantly went
over to the markets in England. "I go to Norwich," he said, "not to
Liverpool. Liverpool is only a meat-market, and overdone at that.
Norwich is better for meat and for stores." Both agreed this was a great
year for the potatoes, and said Ireland was actually exporting potatoes
to America. One mentioned a case of two cargoes of potatoes just taken
from Dundrum for America, the vessel which took them having brought over
six hundred tons of hay from America.

They were breezy, out-of-door men, both of them. One amused us with a
tale of espying, the other day, two hounds, a collie dog, a terrier, and
eighteen cats all amicably running together across a farmyard, with
their tails erect, after a dairymaid who was to feed them. The other
capped this with a story of a pig on his own place, which follows one of
his farm lads about like a dog,--"the only pig," he said, "I ever saw
show any human feeling!" The gentleman who goes to Norwich thought the
English landlords were in many cases worse off than the Irish. "Ah, no!"
interfered the other, "not quite; for if the English can't get their
rents, at least they keep their land, but we can neither get our rents
nor keep our land!" They both admitted that there had been much bad
management of the land in Ireland, and that the agents had done the
owners as well as the tenants a great deal of harm in the past, but they
both maintained stoutly that the legislation of late years had been
one-sided and short-sighted. "The tenants haven't got real good from
it," said one, "because the claims of the landlord no longer check their
extravagance, and they run more in debt than ever to the shopkeepers and
traders, who show them little mercy." Both also strenuously insisted on
the gross injustice of leaving the landlords unrelieved of any of the
charges fixed upon their estates, while their means of meeting those
charges were cut down by legislation.

"You have no landlords in America," said one, "but if you