difficult and costly to get enough for them.

In equally poor case with the cottiers is the woman who keeps the
village shop at Derryinver. Those who know the village shops of England
and the mingled odour of flour, bacon, cheese, and plenty which
pervades them, would shudder at Mrs. Stanton's store at Derryinver. It
is a shop almost without a window; in fact, a cabin like those occupied
by her customers. The shopkeeper's stock is very low just now. She
could do a roaring trade on credit, but unfortunately her own is
exhausted. Like the little traders during English and Welsh strikes,
her sympathies are all with her customers, but she can get no credit
for herself. She has a matter of 40l. standing out; she owes 21l.; she
has sold her cow and calf to keep up her credit at Clifden, and she is
doing no business. When I looked in on her she was engaged in combing
the hair of one of her fair-skinned children, an operation not common
in these parts, where the back hair of even grown women in such centres
of commercial activity as Clifden has a curious knack of coming down.
It is part of the tumble-downishness of the neglected West. At some
remote period things must have been new, but bating Casson's Hotel, at
Letterfrack, there is nothing in good order between Mr.
Mitchell-Henry's well-managed estate at Kylemore and Galway. At Clifden
and all through the surrounding country things appear to be decaying or
decayed. The doors will not shut, and the windows cannot be opened; the
bells have no handles, and if they had would not ring; the wall-paper
and the carpets, the houses, the land and the people seem to be all
very much the worse for wear. The dirt and slovenliness are
unspeakable. I tried to write on the table of the general room of a
well-known inn, or so-called hotel, the other day, and my arm actually
stuck to the table, so adhesive was the all-pervading filth. The white
flannel cloaks and deep red petticoats of Connemara women are
picturesque enough on market-day in Clifden, but, like Eastern cities,
they should be seen from afar. I have a shrewd suspicion that the
blight has gone beyond the potato, and it is not very difficult to see
how it strode onward. The little towns of the West depend entirely upon
the surrounding country for their subsistence, and, when the peasantry
are poor, gradually undergo commercial atrophy. Just at this moment
they are in a livelier condition than usual, somewhat because the
comparativ