t contented.

It was the eve of the Parnell celebration in Dublin, and the town
was full of excursionists waiting for a train which was to start at
midnight. When Michael left me I spent some time in an hotel, and
then wandered down to the railway.

A wild crowd was on the platform, surging round the train in every
stage of intoxication. It gave me a better instance than I had yet
seen of the half-savage temperament of Connaught. The tension of
human excitement seemed greater in this insignificant crowd than
anything I have felt among enormous mobs in Rome or Paris.

There were a few people from the islands on the platform, and I got
in along with them to a third-class carriage. One of the women of
the party had her niece with her, a young girl from Connaught who
was put beside me; at the other end of the carriage there were some
old men who were talking Irish, and a young man who had been a
sailor.

When the train started there were wild cheers and cries on the
platform, and in the train itself the noise was intense; men and
women shrieking and singing and beating their sticks on the
partitions. At several stations there was a rush to the bar, so the
excitement increased as we proceeded.

At Ballinasloe there were some soldiers on the platform looking for
places. The sailor in our compartment had a dispute with one of
them, and in an instant the door was flung open and the compartment
was filled with reeling uniforms and sticks. Peace was made after a
moment of uproar and the soldiers got out, but as they did so a pack
of their women followers thrust their bare heads and arms into the
doorway, cursing and blaspheming with extraordinary rage.

As the train moved away a moment later, these women set up a frantic
lamentation. I looked out and caught a glimpse of the wildest heads
and figures I have ever seen, shrieking and screaming and waving
their naked arms in the light of the lanterns.

As the night went on girls began crying out in the carriage next us,
and I could hear the words of obscene songs when the train stopped
at a station.

In our own compartment the sailor would allow no one to sleep, and
talked all night with sometimes a touch of wit or brutality and
always with a beautiful fluency with wild temperament behind it.

The old men in the corner, dressed in black coats that had something
of the antiquity of heirlooms, talked all night among themselves in
Gaelic. The young girl beside me lost her sh