t them a good deal to go and come?"

"Oh no; they get cheap rates. They send them from Galway to Dublin like
cattle, at L2, 5s. a car, and that makes about 1s. 6d. a head; and then
they are taken over on the steamers very cheap. Often the graziers that
do large business with the companies, will have a right to send over a
number of men free; and they stowaway too; and then on the railways in
England they get passes free often from cattle-dealers, specially when
they are coming back, and the dealers don't want their passes. They do
very well. They'll bring back L7 and L10. I was on a boat once, and
there was a man; he was drunk; he was from Galway somewhere, and they
took away and kept for him L18, all in good golden sovereigns; that was
the most I ever saw. And he was drunk, or who'd ever have known he had
it?"

"Do the farmers build houses for the labourers?"

"Build houses, is it! Glory be to God! who ever heard of such a thing?
The farmers are a poor proud lot. They'd let a labourer die in the
ditch!"

All that this poor man said was corroborated by another man of a higher
class, very familiar with the conditions of life and labour here, and
indeed one of the most interesting men I have met in Ireland. Born the
son of a labouring man, he was educated by a priest and educated
himself, till he fitted himself for the charge of a small school, which
he kept to such good purpose that in eighteen years he saved L1100, with
which capital he resolved to begin life as a small farmer and
shopkeeper. He had studied all the agricultural works he could get, and
before he went fairly into the business, he travelled on the Continent,
looking carefully into the methods of culture and manner of life of the
people, especially in Italy and in Belgium. The Belgian farming gave him
new ideas of what might be done in Ireland, and those ideas he has put
into practice, with the best results.

"On the same land with my neighbours," he said, "I double their
production. Where they get two tons of hay I get four or four and a
half, where they get forty-five barrels of potatoes I get a hundred.
Only the other day I got L20 for a bullock I had taken pains with to
fatten him up scientifically. Of course I had a small capital to start
with: but where did I get that? Not from the Government. I earned and
saved it myself; and then I wasn't above learning how best to use it."

He thinks the people here--though by no means what they might be with