o upon St. Patrick's Day, Victoria, she has said
Each Irish regiment shall wear the Green beside the Red;
And she's coming to ould Ireland, who away so long has been,
And dear knows but into Dublin she'll ride Wearing of the Green.'

** Alfred Perceval Graves.

The first cheers were faint and broken, and the emotion that quivered
on every face and the tears that gleamed in a thousand eyes made it the
most touching spectacle in the world. 'Foreign Sovereign, indeed!'
She was the Queen of Ireland, and the nation of courtiers and hero
worshippers was at her feet. There was the history of five hundred years
in that greeting, and to me it spoke volumes.

Plenty of people there were in the crowd, too, who were heartily 'agin
the Government'; but Daniel O'Connell is not the only Irishman who
could combine a detestation of the Imperial Parliament with a passionate
loyalty to the sovereign.

There was a woman near us who 'remimbered the last time Her Noble
Highness come, thirty-nine years back,--glory be to God, thim was the
times!'--and who kept ejaculating, "She's the best woman in the wurrld,
bar none, and the most varchous faymale!" As her husband made no reply,
she was obliged in her excitement to thump him with her umbrella and
repeat, "The most varchous faymale, do you hear?" At which he retorted,
"Have conduct, woman; sure I've nothin' agin it."

"Look at the size of her now," she went on, "sittin' in that grand
carriage, no bigger than me own Kitty, and always in the black, the
darlin'. Look at her, a widdy woman, raring that large and heavy family
of children; and how well she's married off her daughters (more luck to
her!), though to be sure they must have been well fortuned! They do
be sayin' she's come over because she's plazed with seein' estated
gintlemen lave iverything and go out and be shot by thim bloody Boers,
bad scran to thim! Sure if I had the sons, sorra a wan but I'd lave
go! Who's the iligant sojers in the silver stays, Thady? Is it the Life
Guards you're callin' thim?"

There were two soldiers' wives standing on the pavement near us, and
one of them showed a half-sovereign to the other, saying, "'Tis the last
day's airnin' iver I seen by him, Mrs. Muldoon, ma'am! Ah, there's thim
says for this war, an' there's thim says agin this war, but Heaven lave
Himself where he is, I says, for of all the ragin' Turcomaniacs iver a
misfortunate woman was curst with, Pat Brady, my full private,