s white as a wild rose in the hedges in June," spring
up naturally, like daisies in the grass, at every turn. I have said
enough, too, to indicate the type of Celtic temperament to which
Leamy's belonged. His habitual mood was the exquisitely sensitive, the
tender, playful, reverent mood. He was, in this, the antithesis of the
"cloudy and lightning" Standish O'Grady, whose temperament, equally
Gaelic, is that of the fighting bard, delighting in battle, fierce,
fuliginous, aristocratic, pagan, with the roll of Homeric hexameters
in his martial style. If O'Grady recalls the Oisin who contended with
Patrick and longed to be slaying with the Fianna, even though they
were in hell, Leamy, _anima naturaliter Christiana_, reminds one
rather of the Irish monk in a distant land moved to write lyrics in
his missal by the song of the bird that makes him think of Erin, or
Marban, the hermit, rejoicing to his brother, the king, in his
"sheiling in the wood," his

"Tree of apples like a hostel vast, ...
The music of the bright red-breasted men, ...
Swarms of bees and chafers, the little musicians of the world,
A gentle chorus."

It may not be amiss, in concluding this note, to add a word about
the author other than as he appears in this book. These stories
exhibit only one aspect of his gifts. They happen to be one of the
things he wrote down. Most of the coinage of his mind, and I think
the best of it, came forth in a form which does not permit of its
being recalled, the form of the spoken and unrecorded word. He was by
nature an improvisor. In the inclusive sense of the term, the sense
which includes poetry, story-telling, description as well as pleading
and exhortation, he was a born orator; and he was at his best when
in the glow of pure improvisation. It thus happened that it was
often a group of friends around a fireside, or a casual audience, who
were the witnesses of the most brilliant play of his genius. He had
a most observant and seeing eye. A walk in the street was fraught
with surprise, and he would come back delighted with his adventures.
Every little common incident--three little boys with their backs
to a wall looking up at a church tower: he would catch snatches of
their talk, speculations about deep things and strange; he would
note that an old Irish apple-woman in a grimy English town left her
basket, with all her stock-in-trade, outside in the street while
she went into a church to commune with h