t seen a North
Antrim Sunday-school wrecked in a faction-fight between the Orange and the
Green? Lord! how the red-edged hymnals and shiny-covered S.P.G. books
hurtled through the air, to burst like hand-grenades upon the texted
walls. In vain the panting, crimson clergyman mounted the superintendent's
platform, and strove to shed the oil of peace upon those seething waters.
Even the class-teachers had broken the rails out of the Windsor
chair-backs, and joined the hideous fray, irrespective of age or sex.

"Miss Maloney--Miss Geoghegan--I am shocked--appalled! In the name of
decency I command yees to desist!"

"Hit him again, Moggy Lenahan, a taste lower down!"

"Serve you right, Mulcahy! why would you march wid the Green?"

Thirty years ago. As I gaped in affright at the horrid scene of strife,
small revengeful fingers twisted themselves viciously in my auburn curls,
and wresting from my grasp a "Child's Own Bible Concordance," a birthday
outrage received from an Evangelical aunt, Julia Dolan, aged twelve, began
to pound me about the face with it. As a snub-nosed urchin, gifted with a
marvellous capacity for the cold storage and quick delivery of Scripture
genealogies and Hebrew proper and improper names, I had often reduced my
mild, long-legged girl-neighbour to tearful confusion. Now meek Julia
seemed as though possessed by seven devils. I had been taught the
elementary rule that boys must not hurt girls, but the code had no precept
helpful in the present instance, when a girl was hurting me. Casting
chivalry to the winds, I remember that I kicked Julia's shins, and she
fled howling; but not before she had reduced my leading feature to a state
of ruin, which created a tremendous sensation when they led me home.
Later, during the election riots, two young women fought in the Market
Place, stripped to the waist, and wielding boards wrenched from the side
of a packing-case, heavy, jagged, and full of nails. And when the soldiers
were called out, we know how many a saddle was emptied by the stones the
children threw....

Only a day previously the centipede-like procession of girls of all ages,
in charge of nuns and pupil-teachers, in passing over the Gueldersdorp
Recreation-Ground, had sustained an experience with which every maiden
bosom would have been still vibrating had not an event even more exciting
occurred between the early morning roll-call and prayers-muster and
breakfast.

Greta Du Taine had had another