If I had said teach
them Irish ten years ago I should have been called a fool, and now if I
say teach them English and let them go to America I am called a
reactionist. You have come from Father O'Hara;" I could see from the
way he said the name that the priests were not friends; "and he has
told you a great many of my people have gone to America. And perhaps
you heard him say that they have not gone to America for the sake of
better wages but because my rule is too severe, because I put down
cross-road dances. Father O'Hara and I think differently, and I have no
doubt he thinks he is quite right."

While we breakfasted Father Madden said some severe things about Father
O'Hara, about the church he had built, and the debt that was still upon
it. I suppose my face told Father Madden of the interest I took in his
opinions, for during breakfast he continued to speak his mind very
frankly on all the subjects I wished to hear him speak on, and when
breakfast was over I offered him a cigar and proposed that we should go
for a walk on his lawn.

"Yes," he said, "there are people who think I am a reactionist because
I put down the ball-alley."

"The ball-alley!"

"There used to be a ball-alley by the church, but the boys wouldn't
stop playing ball during Mass, so I put it down. But you will excuse me
a moment." The priest darted off, and I saw him climb down the wall
into the road; he ran a little way along the road calling at the top of
his voice, and when I got to the wall I saw him coming back. "Let me
help you," I said. I pulled him up and we continued our walk; and as
soon as he had recovered his breath he told me that he had caught sight
of a boy and girl loitering.

"And I hunted them home."

I asked him why, knowing well the reason, and he said:--

"Young people should not loiter along the roads. I don't want bastards
in my parish."

It seemed to me that perhaps bastards were better than no children at
all, even from a religious point of view--one can't have religion
without life, and bastards may be saints.

"In every country," I said, "boys and girls walk together, and the only
idealism that comes into the lives of peasants is between the ages of
eighteen and twenty, when young people meet in the lanes and linger by
the stiles. Afterwards hard work in the fields kills aspiration."

"The idealism of the Irish people does not go into sex, it goes into
religion."

"But religion does not help to continue th