re than she can pay, and it's not her
business to be thravelin' round criticisin' the throubles she's helped
to projuce."

Mr. Rose. "William Ewart Gladstone did enough for your island to make up
for all the harm that the other statesmen may or may not have done."

Mr. Shamrock, touched in his most vulnerable point, shrieks above the
rattle of the wheels: "The wurrst statesman that iver put his name to
paper was William Ewart Gladstone!"

Mr. Rose. "The best, I say!"

Mr. Shamrock. "I say the wurrst!"

Mr. Rose. "The best!!"

Mr. Shamrock. "The wurrst!!"

Mr. Rose (after a pause). "It's your absentee landlords that have done
the mischief. I'd hang every one of them, if I had my way."

Mr. Shamrock. "Faith, they'd be absent thin, sure enough!"

And at this everybody laughs, and the trouble is over for a brief space,
much to the relief of Mrs. Shamrock, until her husband finds himself,
after a little, sufficiently calm to repeat a Cockney anecdote, which is
received by Mr. Rose in resentful silence, it being merely a description
of the common bat, an unfortunate animal that, according to Mr.
Shamrock, "'as no 'ole to 'ide in, no 'ands to 'old by, no 'orns to 'urt
with, though Nature 'as given 'im 'ooks be'ind to 'itch 'imself up by."

The last two noteworthy personages in our party are a dapper Frenchman,
who is in business at Manchester, and a portly Londoner, both of whom
are seeing Ireland for the first time. The Frenchman does not grumble at
the weather, for he says that in Manchester it rains twice a day all the
year round, save during the winter, when it commonly rains all day.

Sir James Paget, in an address on recreation, defined its chief element
to be surprise. If that is true, the portly Londoner must be exhilarated
beyond words. But with him the sensation does not stop with surprise:
it speedily becomes amazement, and then horror; for he is of the
comparative type, and therefore sees things done and hears things said,
on every hand, that are not said and done at all in the same way in
London. He sees people--ay, and policemen--bicycling on footpaths and
riding without lamps, and is horrified to learn that they are seldom,
if ever, prosecuted. He is shocked at the cabins, and the rocks, and the
beggar children, and the lack of trees; at the lack of logic, also, and
the lack of shoes; at the prevalence of the brogue; above all, at the
presence of the pig in the parlour. He is outraged at the weather,