ned little and lost much by the change from the old type of
landlord to the new, for the latter, being practical men, had no
sympathy for the man who was permanently behindhand with his rent. And
no one can say that this habitual arrear was a healthy stimulus to the
moral wellbeing of the tenant himself, though he felt aggrieved at its
being checked.

There is not the least need to sketch how I gradually became one of the
largest land agents in Ireland. It has been published in other books,
and would only prove wearisome if set out in detail in this volume. So I
will merely observe that only two years after the big Fenian rising, as
it was called--which I should describe as being composed of a rabble of
less importance than the ragamuffins led by Wat Tyler--so little was I
impressed by its magnitude that I went to live at Edenburn. There I laid
out a lot of money in rebuilding the house, spending over L2000 in
additions. This was most idiotic of me, because I had not counted on the
infernal devices of Mr. Gladstone to render Ireland uninhabitable for
peaceful and law-abiding folk.

When I first settled down there, labourers were working at eightpence or
tenpence a day. Now the lowest rate is two shillings. The labourer
rectified this rate by emigration, and if the farmers, who could more
advantageously have emigrated, had done so, the cry for compulsory
reduction would never have arisen.

Thus far I have dealt with facts and myself as concerned in them, but I
propose now to relate a few stories, a thing more congenial to my
temperament than any other form of conversational exercise. Whether it
will equally commend itself to the reader is a matter on which I, as an
aged novice in literature, though hopeful, am of course uncertain.

Indeed I am in exactly the predicament of a farmer's wife who was asked
by the Dowager Lady Godfrey, after a month of marriage, how she liked
her husband.

'I had plenty of recommendation with him,' was the reply, 'but I have
not had enough trial of him yet to say for sure.'

There is a story about a honeymoon couple at Killarney which is worth
telling.

The bridegroom had a valet, a good, faithful fellow, long in his
service, but talkative, a thing his master loathed. He said to him:--

'John, I've often told you to hold your tongue about my affairs. This
time I emphatically mean it. If you tell the people in the hotel that I
am on my honeymoon, I'll sack you on the spot.'

So John