g to the Fitzgeralds, the
betrayal of the 'Cause of Ireland.' The particular instance occurred in
the sixteenth century, but no Fitzgerald could ever afterward meet any
Moriarty at a fair without crying, "Who dare tread on the tail of me
coat?" and inviting him to join in the dishcussion with shticks. This
practically is Mr. Jordan's position; and if an Irishman desires to
live entirely in the past, he can be as unhappy as any man alive. He is
writing a book, which Mrs. Wogan Odevaine insists is to be called The
Groans of Ireland; but after a glance at a page of memoranda pencilled
in a collection of Swift's Irish Tracts that he lent to me (the
volume containing that ghastly piece of irony, The Modest Proposal for
Preventing the Poor of Ireland from being a Burden to their Parents
and Country), I have concluded that he is editing a Catalogue of Irish
Wrongs, Alphabetically Arranged. This idea pleased Mrs. Wogan Odevaine
extremely; and when she drove over to tea, bringing several cheerful
young people to call upon us, she proposed, in the most light-hearted
way in the world, to play what she termed the Grievance Game, an
intellectual diversion which she had invented on the instant. She
proposed it, apparently, with a view of showing us how small a knowledge
of Ireland's ancient wrongs is the property of the modern Irish girl,
and how slight a hold on her memory and imagination have the unspeakably
bitter days of the long ago.

We were each given pencil and paper, and two or three letters of the
alphabet, and bidden to arrange the wrongs of Ireland neatly under
them, as we supposed Mr. Jordan to be doing for the instruction and the
depression of posterity. The result proved that Mrs. Odevaine was a true
prophet, for the youngest members of the coterie came off badly enough,
and read their brief list of grievances with much chagrin at their lack
of knowledge; the only piece of information they possessed in common
being the inherited idea that England never had understood Ireland,
never would, never could, never should, never might understand her.

Rosetta Odevaine succeeded in remembering, for A, F, and H, Absenteeism,
Flight of the Earls, Famine, and Hunger; her elder sister, Eileen, fresh
from college, was rather triumphant with O and P, giving us Oppression
of the Irish Tenantry, Penal Laws, Protestant Supremacy, Poynings' Law,
Potato Rot, and Plantations. Their friend, Rhona Burke, had V, W, X, Y,
Z, and succeeded onl