, Jarvis; but what will fill their mouths in the
meantime?

--_Goldsmith, "The Good-Natured Man"_

[Illustration: OLIVER GOLDSMITH]

The Isle of Erin has the same number of square miles as
the State of Indiana; it also has more kindness to the acre than any
other country on earth.

Ireland has five million inhabitants; once it had eight. Three millions
have gone away, and when one thinks of landlordism he wonders why the
five millions did not go, too. But the Irish are a poetic people and love
the land of their fathers with a childlike love, and their hearts are all
bound up in sweet memories, rooted by song and legend into nooks and
curious corners, so the tendrils of affection hold them fast.

Ireland is very beautiful. Its pasture-lands and meadow-lands,
blossom-decked and water-fed, crossed and recrossed by never-ending
hedgerows, that stretch away and lose themselves in misty nothingness,
are fair as a poet's dream. Birds carol in the white hawthorn and the
yellow furze all day long, and the fragrant summer winds that blow lazily
across the fields are laden with the perfume of fairest flowers.

It is like crossing the dark river called Death, to many, to think of
leaving Ireland--besides that, even if they wanted to go they haven't
money to buy a steerage ticket.

From across the dark river called Death come no remittances; but from
America many dollars are sent back to Ireland. This often supplies the
obolus that secures the necessary bit of Cunard passport.

Whenever an Irishman embarks at Queenstown, part of the five million
inhabitants go down to the waterside to see him off. Not long ago I stood
with the crowd and watched two fine lads go up the gangplank, each
carrying a red handkerchief containing his worldly goods. As the good
ship moved away we lifted a wild wail of woe that drowned the sobbing of
the waves. Everybody cried--I wept, too--and as the great, black ship
became but a speck on the Western horizon we embraced each other in
frenzied grief.

There is beauty in Ireland--physical beauty of so rare and radiant a type
that it makes the heart of an artist ache to think that it can not
endure. On country roads, at fair time, the traveler will see barefoot
girls who are women, and just suspecting it, who have cheeks like ripe
pippins; laughing eyes with long, dark, wicked lashes; teeth like ivory;
necks of perfect poise; and waists that, never having known a corset, are
pure Greek.