th good potato crops,
people seemed content and times were fairly good. I should say there was
not such general drunkenness as in later times, and very little porter
was consumed in those days--at all events outside Dublin. What schools
there were were shockingly bad, and reading, not to say writing, was an
exceptional accomplishment, not only among the labouring classes, but
among those who held their heads much higher. This of course impressed
me coming straight from Scotland, where a really grand education has
been the national birthright for generations.

I began to farm about sixty acres near Dingle, and gave my entire time
to it, an assiduity I have compared in my mind to that of the Norwegian
reclaiming the little arable spots on the mountain. We both worked
pretty hard for very scanty results. I did not even live on my tiny
property, but with my mother--my father had died after I returned from
my English schools and before I went to Kelso.

Still matters were not long satisfactory, owing to the failure of the
potato crop in 1845, when the mortality became fearful in consequence.

So at the very end of the year I migrated from Kerry to become an
assistant land agent in Cork, and thus really embarked on the profession
of my life--one which, on the whole, I have most thoroughly and heartily
enjoyed.

I hoped then that I had not done with my beloved Kerry, and my
association with that great kingdom has indeed been lifelong. I have
always understood the feeling of the Irish emigrants who have had sods
of their native earth sent out to them to the New World. _Heimweh_ is
after all a good thing, and Kerry to me would always seem to be
appealing, however far I had roamed.

CHAPTER V

LAND AGENT IN CORK

Had I been able to obtain a reasonably large farm near Dingle, I should
never have become a land agent, and I most certainly should never have
given evidence before any Commission.

In default of adequate land accommodation, I embarked on my profession
by becoming assistant land agent to my brother-in-law, the Knight of
Kerry, who was agent to Sir George Colthurst. I lived with the Knight at
Inniscarra in County Cork, not far from Blarney.

From that time onward I worked steadily, and as I take my ease at the
Carlton to-day, I really feel I have done as much honest labour in my
career as has any man.

In proof I may cite a day's record some years later, taken almost at
random from my diary.

I bega