ye,' an' ye care the divil an' all about it. We don't care what
happens, once we get rid of that yoke. A friend of mine said yesterday,
'I never see an Englishman but I think I'd like to have him under my
feet, an' meself stickin' somethin' into him.' There's murther in their
hearts, an' ye can't wonder at it. An' owld Gladstone's a madman, no
less. I'm towld he ordhers a dozen top hats at once, an' his wife gets
the shop-keeper to take thim back. An' I'm towld he stales the spoons
whin he goes out to dine wid his frinds, an' that his wife takes thim
back in a little basket nixt mornin'. And I thought that was all
nonsinse till I seen the bill. An' thin I felt I could believe it; for,
bedad, nobody but a madman could have drawn up sich a measure, to
offind everybody, an' plaze nobody. 'Tis what ye'd expect from a
lunatic asylum. But, thin, 'tis Home Rule. 'Tis the principle; an' as
the mimber for Roscommon says, ''Tis ourselves will apply it, an' 'tis
ourselves will explain it. That's where we'll rape the advantage,' says
he."

The Athlone market is "now on," and several hundred cows and calves
are lowing in front of the Royal, Mrs. Haire's excellent caravanserai.
Sheep are bleating, and excited farmers are yelling like pandemonium
or an Irish House of Commons. Athlone is a wonderful place for
donkeys, which swell the nine-fold harmony with incessant cacophonous
braying, so that the town might fairly claim the distinction of being
the chosen home, if not the _fons et origo_, of Nationalist oratory.

Athlone, June 3rd.

No. 31.--THE "UNION OF HEARTS."

Once again the Atlantic stops me. The eighty-three miles of country
between here and Athlone have brought about no great change in the
appearance of the people, who, on the whole, are better clad than the
Galway folks. The difference in customs, dress, language, manners, and
looks between one part of Ireland and another close by is sometimes
very considerable. There is a lack of homogeneity, a want of fusion,
an obvious need of some mixing process. The people do not travel, and
in the rural districts many of them live and die without journeying
five miles from home. The railways now projected or in process of
construction will shortly change all this, and the tourist, with more
convenience, will no longer be able to see the Ireland of centuries
ago. The language is rapidly dying out. Not a word of Irish did I hear
in Athlone, even on market day. The Westporter