ss to
him," said a third; "I wish he'd held out another month until the
weather got dacent." A man called Carroll thereupon produced a
half-pint of whiskey, and they all drank to the soul of the departed.
Unhappily, however, the hearse was over-weighted, and they had not
reached the cemetery before the spring broke, and the bottle with it.

Moran must have felt strange and out of place in that other kingdom he
was entering, perhaps while his friends were drinking in his honour.
Let us hope that some kindly middle region was found for him, where he
can call dishevelled angels about him with some new and more
rhythmical form of his old

"Gather round me, boys, will yez
Gather round me?
And hear what I have to say
Before ould Salley brings me
My bread and jug of tay;"

and fling outrageous quips and cranks at cherubim and seraphim.
Perhaps he may have found and gathered, ragamuffin though he be, the
Lily of High Truth, the Rose of Far-sight Beauty, for whose lack so
many of the writers of Ireland, whether famous or forgotten, have been
futile as the blown froth upon the shore.

_W. B. Yeats._

A BROTHER OF ST. FRANCIS

When talking to a wise friend a while ago I told her of the feeling of
horror which had invaded me when watching a hippopotamus.

"Indeed," said she, "you do not need to go to the hippopotamus for a
sensation. Look at a pig! There is something dire in the face of a
pig. To think the same power should have created it that created a
star!"

Those who love beauty and peace are often tempted to scamp their
thinking, to avoid the elemental terrors that bring night into the
mind. Yet if the fearful things of life are there, why not pluck up
heart and look at them? Better have no Bluebeard's chamber in the
mind. Better go boldly in and see what hangs by the wall. So salt, so
medicinal is Truth, that even the bitterest draught may be made
wholesome to the gentlest soul. So I would recommend anyone who can
bear to think to leave the flower garden and go down and spend an hour
by the pigstye.

There lies our friend in the sun upon his straw, blinking his clever
little eye. Half friendly is his look. (He does not know that
I--Heaven forgive me!--sometimes have bacon for breakfast!) Plainly,
with that gashed mouth, those dreadful cheeks, and that sprawl of his,
he belongs to an older world; that older world when first the mud and
slime rose and moved, and, roaring, foun