ass of stout in the air, he discoursed
on the business of the remote ends of the earth with the glibness of a
fourth secretary of Legation. Here was a little farmer, digging betimes
in a forlorn patch of wet ground, a man to whom a sudden two shillings
would appear as a miracle, a ragged, unkempt peasant, whose mind roamed
the world like the soul of a lost diplomat. This unschooled man believed
that the earth was a sphere inhabited by men that are alike in the
essentials, different in the manners, the little manners, which are
accounted of such great importance by the emaciated. He was to a degree
capable of knowing that he lived on a sphere and not on the apex of a
triangle.

And yet, when the talk had turned another corner, he confidently assured
the assembled company that a hair from a horse's tail when thrown in a
brook would turn shortly to an eel.

III.--THE ROYAL IRISH CONSTABULARY.

The newspapers called it a Veritable Arsenal. There was a description of
how the sergeant of Constabulary had bent an ear to receive whispered
information of the concealed arms, and had then marched his men swiftly
and by night to surround a certain house. The search elicited a
double-barrelled breech-loading shot-gun, some empty shells, powder,
shot, and a loading machine. The point of it was that some of the Irish
papers called it a Veritable Arsenal, and appeared to congratulate the
Government upon having strangled another unhappy rebellion in its nest.
They floundered and misnamed and mis-reasoned, and made a spectacle of
the great modern craft of journalism, until the affair of this poor
poacher was too absurd to be pitiable, and Englishmen over their coffee
next morning must have almost believed that the prompt action of the
Constabulary had quelled a rising. Thus it is that the Irish fight the
Irish.

One cannot look Ireland straight in the face without seeing a great many
constables. The country is dotted with little garrisons. It must have
been said a thousand times that there is an absolute military
occupation. The fact is too plain.

The constable himself becomes a figure interesting in its isolation. He
has in most cases a social position which is somewhat analogous to that
of a Turk in Thessaly. But then, in the same way, the Turk has the
Turkish army. He can have battalions as companions and make the
acquaintance of brigades. The constable has the Constabulary, it is
true; but to be cooped with three or fo