e like a hoss as has had a feed of corn. They was meek an' mild
enough when I come over. Now they're a-gettin' perky, an' a-talkin'
politics. They usen't to see no agitators. They never had no meetin's;
why? there was no chance of a collection. Sometimes I gets down on 'em
proper. 'Tother day I says, 'You chaps, wi' yer Home Rule, I says,
reminds me of a character in the Bible, I says.' Bein' Catholics, they
don't read the Bible for theirselves. The priests read it for 'em. But
one of 'em cocks up his nose, an' he says, 'We're like a character in
the Bible, are we? Well,' he says, 'who was he?'

"'You're like the wild ass that sniffed up the wind instead of goin'
in for sommat more substantial,' I says. That's what I told 'em. They
did look down their noses, I tell you. An' they fell to talkin' i'
Irish. They couldn't answer me, do what they would."

Before leaving the Connemara district I paid a second visit to
Oughterard in order that I might see the progress made by Irishmen in
the art of railway making. A gang or two were engaged in the
comparatively skilled work of rail-laying, and the way they got over
the ground was truly surprising. Two trucks stood on the line already
laid, one bearing sleepers, the other loaded with steel rails. Four or
five couples of men shouldered sleepers and laid them on the track at
spots marked by a club-footed Irishman, who swore at everything with a
vigour which spoke well for his wind. Several men lifted a thirty feet
length of rail, weighing nearly six hundred-weight, and laid it on the
sleepers, when it was instantly bolted and secured. The same having
been done on the other side, the trucks were pushed along the
newly-laid ten yards, and the process was repeated, the Irish ganger
above-mentioned swearing till the surrounding bogs seemed to quake. An
unhappy Connemaran having dropped his end of the sleeper a few inches
from the right spot, was cursed through the entire dictionary, the
ganger winding up a solemn declaration that he had not seen anything
so Blankly and Double-Blankly and forty times Blankly idiotic since
"the owld goat died." An English ganger hard by never spoke at all,
but no doubt his men felt lonely. A labourer who had hurt his foot,
and was awaiting a friendly truck to take him home, said of the
swearer:--

"He manes no harm, an' the Boys doesn't care a rap for his swearin'.
These men want no elbowin' on, for they are paid by the piece, so that
the harder the