nd walked up with him. Sion House, built for him by his
brother, an accomplished architect, is a handsome Queen Anne mansion. It
stands on a fine knoll, commanding lovely views on all sides. Below it,
and beyond a little stream, rise the extensive flax-mills which are the
life of the place, under the eye and within touch of the hand of the
master. These works were established here by Mr. Herdman's father, after
he had made a vain attempt to establish them at Ballyshannon in Donegal,
half a century ago. As all salmon fishers know, the water-power is
admirable at Ballyshannon, where the Erne pours in torrents down a
thirty feet fall. But the ignorance and indolence of the people made
Ballyshannon quite impossible, with this result, that while the Erne
still flows unvexed to the sea, and the people of Ballyshannon live very
much as they lived in 1835, here at Sion the Mourne enables 1100 Irish
operatives to work up L90,000 worth of Irish flax every year into yarn
for the Continent, and to divide among themselves some L20,000 a year in
wages.

After luncheon we walked with Mr. Herdman through the mills and the
model village which has grown up around them. Everywhere we found order,
neatness, and thrift. The operatives are almost all people of the
country, Catholics and Protestants in almost equal numbers. "I find it
wise," said Mr. Herdman, "to give neither religion a preponderance, and
to hold my people of both religions to a common standard of fidelity and
efficiency." The greatest difficulty he has had to contend with is the
ineradicable objection of some of the peasantry to continuous industry.
He told us of a strapping lass of eighteen who came to the mills, but
very soon gave up and went back to the parental shebeen in the mountains
rather than get up early in the morning to earn fourteen shillings a
week.

Three weeks of her work would have paid the year's rent of the paternal
holding.

In the village, which is regularly laid out, is a reading-room for the
workpeople. There are cricket clubs, and one of the mill buildings (just
now crammed with bales of flax) has been fitted up by Mr. Herdman as a
theatre. There is a drop-curtain representing the Lake of Como, and the
flies are flanked by life-size copies in plaster of the Apollo Belvidere
and the Medicean Venus. This is a development I had hardly looked to see
in Ulster.

After we had gone over the works thoroughly, Mr. Herdman took us back,
on a transparent pr