were not spent in pleasant interchange of thought
and speech. I can well understand Mrs. Colquhoun's objections to the
housing of the Dublin poor in tenements,--even in those of a better
kind than the present horrible examples; for wherever they are
huddled together in any numbers they will devote most of their time to
conversation. To them talking is more attractive than eating; it even
adds a new joy to drinking; and if I may judge from the groups I have
seen gossiping over a turf fire till midnight, it is preferable to
sleeping. But do not suppose they will bubble over with joke and
repartee, with racy anecdote, to every casual newcomer. The tourist
who looks upon the Irishman as the merry-andrew of the English-speaking
world, and who expects every jarvey he meets to be as whimsical as
Mickey Free, will be disappointed. I have strong suspicions that ragged,
jovial Mickey Free himself, delicious as he is, was created by Lever to
satisfy the Anglo-Saxon idea of the low-comedy Irishman. You will live
in the Emerald Isle for many a month, and not meet the clown or the
villain so familiar to you in modern Irish plays. Dramatists have made
a stage Irishman to suit themselves, and the public and the gallery are
disappointed if anything more reasonable is substituted for him. You
will find, too, that you do not easily gain Paddy's confidence. Misled
by his careless, reckless impetuosity of demeanour, you might expect to
be the confidant of his joys and sorrows, his hopes and expectations,
his faiths and beliefs, his aspirations, fears, longings, at the first
interview. Not at all; you will sooner be admitted to a glimpse of the
travelling Scotsman's or the Englishman's inner life, family history,
personal ambition. Glacial enough at first and far less voluble, he
melts soon enough, if he likes you. Meantime, your impulsive Irish
friend gives himself as freely at the first interview as at the
twentieth; and you know him as well at the end of a week as you are
likely to at the end of a year. He is a product of the past, be
he gentleman or peasant. A few hundred years of necessary reserve
concerning articles of political and religious belief have bred caution
and prudence in stronger natures, cunning and hypocrisy in weaker ones.

Our days are very varied. We have been several times into the town and
spent an hour in the Petty Sessions Court with Mr. Colquhoun, who sits
on the bench. Each time we have come home laden with stori