t accept this
blazing fine offer, then I will, and you'll behold me in a new attitude.
The fellow yawns! You don't know me yet, Philip. They tell us over here
we ought to be satisfied. Fall upon our list of wrongs, and they set to
work yawning. You can only move them by popping at them over hedges and
roaring on platforms. They're incapable of understanding a complaint
a yard beyond their noses. The Englishman has an island mind, and when
he's out of it he's at sea.'

'Mad, you mean,' said Philip.

'I repeat my words, Captain Philip O'Donnell, late of the staff of the
General commanding in Canada.'

'The Irishman too has an island mind, and when he's out of it he's at
sea, and unable to manage his craft,' said Philip.

'You'll find more craft in him when he's buffeted than you reckoned on,'
his cousin flung back. 'And if that isn't the speech of a traitor sold
to the enemy, and now throwing off the mask, traitors never did mischief
in Ireland! Why, what can you discover to admire in these people? Isn't
their army such a combination of colours in the uniforms, with their
yellow facings on red jackets, I never saw out of a doll-shop, and never
saw there. And their Horse Guards, weedy to a man! fit for a doll-shop
they are, by my faith! And their Foot Guards: Have ye met the fellows
marching? with their feet turned out, flat as my laundress's irons, and
the muscles of their calves depending on the joints to get 'm along, for
elasticity never gave those bones of theirs a springing touch; and their
bearskins heeling behind on their polls; like pot-house churls daring
the dursn't to come on. Of course they can fight. Who said no? But they
're not the only ones: and they 'll miss their ranks before they can
march like our Irish lads. The look of their men in line is for all
the world to us what lack-lustre is to the eye. The drill they 've had
hasn't driven Hodge out of them, it has only stiffened the dolt; and
dolt won't do any longer; the military machine requires intelligence
in all ranks now. Ay, the time for the Celt is dawning: I see it, and
I don't often spy a spark where there isn't soon a blaze. Solidity and
stupidity have had their innings: a precious long innings it has been;
and now they're shoved aside like clods of earth from the risin flower.
Off with our shackles! We've only to determine it to be free, and we'll
bloom again; and I'll be the first to speak the word and mount the
colours. Follow me! Will ye j