always a turf bog, stacks
and stacks of the cut blocks, a woman in a gown of dark-red flannel
resting for a moment, with the empty creel beside her, and a man cutting
in the distance. After climbing the long hill beyond the 'station' we
are rewarded by a glimpse of more fertile fields; the clumps of ragwort
and purple loosestrife are reinforced with kingcups and lilies growing
near the wayside, and the rare sight, first of a pot of geraniums in the
window, and then of a garden all aglow with red fuchsias, torch plants,
and huge dahlias, so cheers Veritas that he takes heart again. "This
is something like home!" he exclaims breezily; whereupon Mr. Shamrock
murmurs that if people find nothing to admire in a foreign country save
what resembles their own, he wonders that they take the trouble to be
travelling.

"It is a darlin' year for the pitaties," the drivers says; and there
are plenty of them planted hereabouts, even in stony spots not worth
a keenogue for anything else, for "pitaties doesn't require anny
inTHRICKet farmin', you see, ma'am."

The clergyman remarks that only three things are required to make
Ireland the most attractive country in the world: "Protestantism,
cleanliness, and gardens"; and Mr. Shamrock, who is of course a Roman
Catholic, answers this tactful speech in a way that surprises the
speaker and keeps him silent for hours.

The Birmingham cutler, who has a copy of Ismay's Children in his pocket,
triumphantly reads aloud, at this moment, a remark put into the mouth of
an Irish character: "The low Irish are quite destitute of all notion of
beauty,--have not the remotest particle of artistic sentiment or taste;
their cabins are exactly as they were six hundred years ago, for they
never want to improve themselves."

Then Mr. Shamrock asserts that any show of prosperity on a tenant's
part would only mean an advance of rent on the landlord's; and Mr. Rose
retorts that while that might have been true in former times, it is
utterly false to-day.

Mrs. Shamrock, who is a natural apologist, pleads that the Irish gentry
have the most beautiful gardens in the world and the greatest natural
taste in gardening, and there must be some reason why the lower classes
are so different in this respect. May it not be due partly to lack of
ground, lack of money to spend on seeds and fertilisers, lack of all
refining, civilising and educating influences? Mr. Shamrock adds that
the dwellers in cabins cannot successf