all hostile. They would not allow us into the
processions any more. If we could bring forward some sort of roaring
black devil we would be more than welcome. Shining examples were not in
favour. We were sent home in disgrace and broke up. As the preachers
say, our last state was worse than our first.

"We became sullen and drowsy and fat and dull. We got to hate the sight
of each other, so much so that we began to pay our rents behind each
other's backs, at first the reduced rents, then, gale day by gale day,
we got back to the original rent, and kept on paying it. Our good
landlord took his rents and said nothing. Gobstown became the most
accursed place in all Ireland. Brother could not trust brother. And
there were our neighbours going from one sensation to another. They were
as lively as trout, as enterprising as goats, as intelligent as
Corkmen. They were thin and eager and good-tempered. They ate very
little, drank water, slept well, men with hard knuckles, clean bowels,
and pale eyes. Anything they hit went down. They were always ready to go
to the gallows for each other.

"I had a famous cousin on one of these estates, and I suppose you heard
of him? You didn't! What are they teaching you at school at all? Latin
grammar? Well, well!... My cousin was a clumsy fellow with only a little
of middling kind of brains, but a bit of fight in him. Yet look at the
way he got on, and look at me, shodding little boys like yourself! I was
born under a lucky star but my cousin was born under a lucky landlord--a
ferocious fellow who got into a garret in London and kept roaring across
at Ireland for more and more blood. Every time I thought of that old
skin of a man howling in the London garret I said to myself, 'He'll be
the making of my cousin.' And so, indeed, he was. Three agents were
brought down on my cousin's estate. State trials were running like great
plays in the courthouse. Blood was always up. They had six fife-and-drum
bands and one brass band. They had green and gold banners with harps
and streamers, and mottoes in yellow lettering, that took four hardy men
to carry on a windy day. The heads of the Peelers were hardly ever out
of their helmets. The resident magistrate rose one day in the bosom of
his family, his eyes closed, to say grace before meals, and from dint of
habit he was chanting the Riot Act over the table until his wife flew at
him with, 'How dare you, George! The mutton is quite all right!' Little
boy