time in the kitchen, then one of
the men said we should be going. I said it would not be right to go
without saying a word to Mr. Synge. Then the servant-girl went up
and brought him down, and he gave us another glass of whisky, and he
gave me a book in Irish because I was going to sea, and I was able
to read in the Irish.

I owe it to Mr. Synge and that book that when I came back here,
after not hearing a word of Irish for thirty years, I had as good
Irish, or maybe better Irish, than any person on the island.

I could see all through his talk that the sense of superiority which
his scholarship in this little-known language gave him above the
ordinary seaman, had influenced his whole personality and been the
central interest of his life.

On one voyage he had a fellow-sailor who often boasted that he had
been at school and learned Greek, and this incident took place:--

One night we had a quarrel, and I asked him could he read a Greek
book with all his talk of it.

'I can so,' said he.

'We'll see that,' said I.

Then I got the Irish book out of my chest, and I gave it into his
hand.

'Read that to me,' said I, 'if you know Greek.'

He took it, and he looked at it this way, and that way, and not a
bit of him could make it out.

'Bedad, I've forgotten my Greek,' said he.

'You're telling a lie,' said I. 'I'm not,' said he; 'it's the divil
a bit I can read it.'

Then I took the book back into my hand, and said to him--'It's the
sorra a word of Greek you ever knew in your life, for there's not a
word of Greek in that book, and not a bit of you knew.'

He told me another story of the only time he had heard Irish spoken
during his voyages:--

One night I was in New York, walking in the streets with some other
men, and we came upon two women quarrelling in Irish at the door of
a public-house.

'What's that jargon?' said one of the men.

'It's no jargon,' said I.

'What is it?' said he.

'It's Irish,' said I.

Then I went up to them, and you know, sir, there is no language like
the Irish for soothing and quieting. The moment I spoke to them they
stopped scratching and swearing and stood there as quiet as two
lambs.

Then they asked me in Irish if I wouldn't come in and have a drink,
and I said I couldn't leave my mates.

'Bring them too,' said they.

Then we all had a drop together.

While we were talking another man had slipped in and sat down in the
corner with his pipe, and the rain had be