reameries and other assisted promotions have been started in
various parts of the country, sometimes with great success. Sir Horace
Plunkett and others have dealt with all this in the most serious spirit.
I prefer to allude to it, and add one anecdote.

A lady asked a respectable old woman how her son was getting on as
manager of the creamery, and the reply came after the following
fashion:--

'Whisna the poor man and all the trouble he has, and him never able to
make the butter and the books scoromund,' which, being translated, is
'correspond.'

Another example I can cite of the difficulty in getting people to put
their intelligence to practical use in the south is to this effect:--

There was a certain widdy woman in a neighbouring parish who was making
great lamentation over her 'pitaties' to the priest, and in consequence
he lent her a machine for the purpose of spraying them. She professed
the profoundest gratitude as well as interest in the implement, but the
task speedily became too big an effort, for she subsequently informed me
that she had sprayed 'half the field to plase his Rivirence, but left
the rest to God.'

And that is the kind of negative piety which is distinctly a
characteristic Irish trait.

CHAPTER XV

LORD-LIEUTENANTS AND CHIEF SECRETARIES

Any Irishman who has reached the shady side of threescore years and ten
must remember many Lord-Lieutenants--the pompously visible symbols of
much vacillating misdirection.

To analyse them would be the work of an historian, to criticise would be
superfluous. They have been so many Malvolios, all alike anxious to win
the favour of that capricious Lady Olivia Erin, and not one of them has
succeeded, though several have merited better fortune than they met with
on Irish soil.

The first Lord-Lieutenant I personally met was Lord Carlisle.

He was a gentleman, but not otherwise remarkable. He had come into the
Government on the resignation of the Peelites, and his popularity in
Ireland was greater than any other holder of the post in the century,
possibly owing to his negative qualities, and also to a charm of manner
more effusive than usual among Englishmen.

He had a habit of dropping his state, and going about Dublin, if not
like Haroun Alraschid, at least with the independence of men in less
august positions.

On one occasion, needing some local information, he went to see the Lord
Mayor of Dublin, but finding him out, was given the add