y a fine, stout lad the like of him wasn't earning his
bread, instead of straying on the roads.

Immediately the young man drew up on the spot where he was, and
began shouting a loud ballad at the top of his voice. The police
tried to stop him; but he went on, getting faster and faster, till
he ended, swinging his head from side to side, in a furious patter,
of which I seem to remember--

Botheration
Take the nation,
Calculation,
In the stable,
Cain and Abel,
Tower of Babel,
And the Battle of Waterloo.

Then he pulled off his hat, dashed in among the police, and did not
leave them till they had all given him the share of money he felt he
had earned for his bread.

In all the circumstances of this tramp life there is a certain
wildness that gives it romance and a peculiar value for those who
look at life in Ireland with an eye that is aware of the arts also.
In all the healthy movements of art, variations from the ordinary
types of manhood are made interesting for the ordinary man, and in
this way only the higher arts are universal. Beside this art,
however, founded on the variations which are a condition and effect
of all vigorous life, there is another art--sometimes confounded
with it--founded on the freak of nature, in itself a mere sign of
atavism or disease. This latter art, which is occupied with the
antics of the freak, is of interest only to the variation from
ordinary minds, and for this reason is never universal. To be quite
plain, the tramp in real life, Hamlet and Faust in the arts, are
variations; but the maniac in real life, and Des Esseintes and all
his ugly crew in the arts, are freaks only.

The Oppression of the Hills

AMONG the cottages that are scattered through the hills of County
Wicklow I have met with many people who show in a singular way the
influence of a particular locality. These people live for the most
part beside old roads and pathways where hardly one man passes in
the day, and look out all the year on unbroken barriers of heath. At
every season heavy rains fall for often a week at a time, till the
thatch drips with water stained to a dull chestnut, and the floor in
the cottages seems to be going back to the condition of the bogs
near it. Then the clouds break, and there is a night of terrific
storm from the south-west--all the larches that survive in these
places are bowed and twisted towards the point where the sun rises
in June--when the winds come d