re nations, that are like those ships
that, launched under a lucky star, sail their appointed courses ever
serenely and eventlessly, and though they may indeed look on tempests,
yet are never shaken by them. But of such was not, it must regretfully
be said, the family of Talbot-Lowry. It can only be supposed that the
gods had preordained its destruction, for on no other assumption can
the dementia of its chief representative be comprehended. It would be
out of place, even, if not impertinent, absurd, to discuss here the
Act of Parliament that in the year nineteen hundred and three, made
provision to change the ownership of Irish land, and to transfer its
possession from the landlords to the tenants. It is sufficient to say
that those of both classes who were endowed with the valuable quality
of knowing on which side of a piece of bread the butter had been
applied, lost as little time as was possible in availing themselves of
the facilities that the Act offered them. The ceremony of Hari Kiri,
even if entered upon with the belief that it will lead to another and
a better world, is not an agreeable one, but it was obvious to most
Irish landlords that, with bad or good grace, sooner or later, that
grim rite had to be faced, and that the hindmost in the transaction
need expect only the fate proverbially promised to such. It is,
possibly, superfluous to say that of the company of the hindmost was
our poor friend, well-meaning and stupid Dick Talbot-Lowry, and also
that his fate, as such, was sedulously pointed out to him by those
friends of his own class, who, like the fabled fox, having lost their
brushes, were eager in explanation of the superiority of their
position.

"I don't own a stick outside my own demesne wall!" says Colonel St.
George. "Of all the hundreds of acres of mountain that my father had,
there isn't as much as one patch of bog left that I could cut a sod of
turf in!"

This whisk of a vanished brush was a gesture well calculated to enrage
Major Dick. It was senseless of St. George to boast of his
limitations, and yet no one better than Dick knew what must be the
feeling of emancipation that prompted the boast.

Autocracy dies hard, and it is probable that long after Leagues of
Nations have decreed the abolition of all Rulers, the Autocrat of the
Breakfast Table will still, in the most inveterate Republics, issue,
unquestioned, his unalterable edicts, with his coat-tails monopolising
the dining-room fire