s
earth worse than a landlord was the despicable wretch who presumed to
take a farm at an advanced rent. This remark was distinctly to the
point, and was applauded accordingly. It was indeed a significant, but
in this part of the country quite unnecessary, intimation that safer,
if not better, holdings might be found than "Hunter's Farm." As most
of the persons present had come from a long distance, some as much as
fifteen or twenty Irish miles, the subsequent proceedings, such as the
passing of resolutions concerning fixity of tenure and so forth, were
got through rapidly, and the meeting dispersed as quietly as it
assembled. The organized bodies marched off the ground in good order,
without the slightest sign of riot or even of enthusiasm. Men and
women, the latter especially, were almost sad and gloomy--for Irish
people. I certainly heard one merry laugh as I was making for my car,
and it was at my own expense. A raw-boned, black-haired woman, "tall,
as Joan of France or English Moll," insisted that I should buy some
singularly ill-favoured apples of her. As I declined for the last time
she fired a parting shot, "An' why won't ye buy me apples? Sure
they're big and round and plump like yerself, aghra"--a sally vastly
to the taste of the bystanders. It struck me, however, that the
people generally seemed rather tired than excited by the proceedings
of the day--the most contented man of all being, I take it, Mike
Gibbons, who had been driving a brisk trade at his "shebeen," the only
house of business or entertainment for miles around.

As I drove homewards on what had suddenly become a hideously raw
evening, my driver entertained me with many heartrending and more or
less truthful stories of evictions. He showed me a vast tract of land
belonging to the Marquis of Sligo, from which the original inhabitants
had, according to his story, been driven to make way for one tenant
who paid less rent for all than they did for a part. One hears of
course a great deal of this kind of thing from the poorer
folk,--car-drivers, whose eloquence is proverbial, not excepted. My
driver had assuredly not been corrupted by reading inflammatory
articles in newspapers, for, although he speaks English as well as
Irish, "letter or line knows he never a one" of either, any more than
did stout William of Deloraine. His statements, however, are strictly
of that class of travellers' tales told by car-drivers, and must be
taken with more than the