rstood that
anybody might have it a bargain, but nobody came forward. I offered
them L30 a year for the whole of the buildings, the waterpower, and
the dwelling house hard by, also that other immense building yonder,
which might prove handy for a store-house; and my offer was accepted.
I took all at that rent for sixty years, with six months' free tenancy
to start with, and I was also to have a free gift of all machinery and
fittings in the place. Here we are going nicely, only in a small way,
but we shall do. We make blankets, tweeds for men's suits and ladies'
dresses. When the Athlone people saw us knocking about they were
surprised they had never thought of it before. There are hundreds of
derelict flour mills going to ruin all over the country, and the
owners would gladly let anyone have them and grand water power for
nothing for two or three years, just to get a chance of obtaining rent
at some future day. We work from morning till night, and neither I nor
my sons have ever tasted a spot of intoxicating liquor. Now there are
many small mills going in the country, the proprietors of which go on
the spree three days a week. If they can do, we can do. This is going
to be a big thing. The only difficulty I have is to turn out the
stuff. Irish tweeds have such a reputation that we simply cannot meet
the demand. Mills and water power may be had for next to nothing, but
the Irish have no enterprise, and the English are afraid to put any
money in the country under present circumstances."

The Lock Mills above mentioned are three or four stories high, with
perhaps a hundred yards of front elevation, a grandly built series of
stone buildings close to the Shannon, which is here about a hundred
and twenty yards wide, and carries tolerably large steamers and
lighters. Six months' occupancy for nothing, the old machinery a free
gift, water power and buildings for sixty years at L30 a year. I have
previously mentioned the twelve big mills abandoned on the Boyne.
Twelve openings for small capitalists--but Irishmen put their money in
stockings, under the flure, in the thatch. _They_ will not trust
Irishmen, although they have no objection to John Bull's doing so. A
bank manager of this district said:--

"Poor Connaught, as they call the province, is a great hoarder. And
when Irishmen invest they invest outside Ireland. Seventy-eight
thousand pounds in the Post Office savings bank in Mayo, the most
poverty-stricken district--as t