e "Keeley Institute," a daughter in her grave,
and a wife who shrank from his presence. His heart was as lonely as a
winter night at sea. Fate had sent him a coachman, a butler, a gardener
and a footman, but she took his happiness and passed it through a hole in
the thatch of a mud-plastered cottage in Ireland, where, each night, six
rosy children soundly slept in one straw bed.

In that cottage I stayed two days. There was a stone floor and bare,
whitewashed walls; but there was a rosebush climbing over the door, and
within health and sunny temper that made mirth with a meal of herbs, and
a tenderness that touched to poetry the prose of daily duties.

But it is well to bear in mind that an Irishman in America and an
Irishman in Ireland are not necessarily the same thing. Often the first
effect of a higher civilization is degeneration. Just as the Chinaman
quickly learns big swear-words, and the Indian takes to drink, and
certain young men on first reading Emerson's essay on "Self-Reliance" go
about with a chip on their shoulders, so sometimes does the first full
breath of freedom's air develop the worst in Paddy instead of the best.

As one tramps through Ireland and makes the acquaintance of a blue-eyed
"broth of a bye," who weighs one hundred and ninety, and measures
forty-four inches around the chest, he catches glimpses of noble traits
and hints of mystic possibilities. There are actions that look like
rudiments of greatness gone, and you think of the days when Olympian
games were played, and finger meanwhile the silver in your pocket and
inwardly place it on this twenty-year-old, pink-faced, six-foot "boy"
that stands before you.

In Ireland there are no forests, but in the peat-bogs are found remains
of mighty trees that once lifted their outstretched branches to the sun.
Are these remains of stately forests symbols of a race of men that, too,
have passed away?

In any wayside village of Leinster you can pick you a model for an
Apollo. He is in rags, is this giant, and can not read, but he can dance
and sing and fight. He has an eye for color, an ear for music, a taste
for rhyme, a love of novelty and a thirst for fun. And withal he has
blundering sympathy and a pity whose tears are near the surface.

Now, will this fine savage be a victim of arrested development, and sink
gradually through weight of years into mere animal stupidity and sodden
superstition?

The chances are that this is just what he will d