Jarvis: A few of our usual cards of compliments—that\'s all. This bill from your tailor; this from your mercer; and this from the little broker in Crooked Lane. He says he has been at a great deal of trouble to get back the money you borrowed.

Honeydew: But I am sure we were at a great deal of trouble in getting him to lend it.

Jarvis: He has lost all patience.

Honeydew: Then he has lost a good thing.

Jarvis: There\'s that ten guineas you were sending to the poor man and his children in the Fleet. I believe that would stop his mouth for a while.

Honeydew: Ay, Jarvis; but what will fill their mouths in the meantime?
—Goldsmith, "The Good-Natured Man"

The Isle of Erin has the same number of square miles as the State of Indiana; it also has more kindness to the acre than any other country on earth.

Ireland has five million inhabitants; once it had eight. Three millions have gone away, and when one thinks of landlordism he wonders why the five millions did not go, too. But the Irish are a poetic people and love the land of their fathers with a childlike love, and their hearts are all bound up in sweet memories, rooted by song and legend into nooks and curious corners, so the tendrils of affection hold them fast.

Ireland is very beautiful. Its pasture-lands and meadow-lands, blossom-decked and water-fed, crossed and recrossed by never-ending hedgerows, that stretch away and lose themselves in misty nothingness, are fair as a poet\'s dream. Birds carol in the white hawthorn and the yellow furze all day long, and the fragrant summer winds that blow lazily across the fields are laden with the perfume of fairest flowers.

It is like crossing the dark river called Death, to many, to think of leaving Ireland—besides that, even if they wanted to go they haven\'t money to buy a steerage ticket.

From across the dark river called Death come no remittances; but from America many dollars are sent back to Ireland. This often supplies the obolus that secures the necessary bit of Cunard passport.

Whenever an Irishman embarks at Queenstown, part of the five million inhabitants go down to the waterside to see him off. Not long ago I stood with the crowd and watched two fine lads go up the gangplank, each carrying a red handkerchief containing his worldly goods. As the good ship moved away we lifted a wild wail of woe that drowned the sobbing of the waves. Everybody cried—I wept, too—and as the great, black ship became but a speck on the Western horizon we embraced each other in frenzied grief.

There is beauty in Ireland—physical beauty of so rare and radiant a type that it makes the heart of an artist ache to think that it can not endure. On country roads, at fair time, the traveler will see barefoot girls who are women, and just suspecting it, who have cheeks like ripe pippins; laughing eyes with long, dark, wicked lashes; teeth like ivory; necks of perfect poise; and waists that, never having known a corset, are pure Greek.

Of course, these girls are aware that we admire them—how could they help it? They carry big baskets on either shapely arm, bundles balanced on their heads, and we, suddenly grown tired, sit on the bankside as they pass by, and feign indifference to their charms.

Once safely past, we admiringly examine their tracks in the soft mud (for there has been a shower during the night), and we vow that such footprints were never before left upon the sands of time.

The typical young woman in Ireland is Juno before she was married; the old woman is Sycorax after Caliban was weaned. Wrinkled, toothless, yellow old hags are seen sitting by the roadside, rocking back and forth, crooning a song that is mate to the chant of the witches in "Macbeth" when they brew the hellbroth.

See that wizened, scarred and cruel old face—how it speaks of a seared and bitter heart! so dull yet so alert, so changeful yet so impassive, so immobile yet so cunning—a paradox in wrinkles, where half-stifled desperation has clawed at the soul until it has fled, and only dead indifference or greedy expectation is left to tell the tragic tale.

"In the name of God, charity, kind gentlemen, charity!" and the old crone stretches forth a long, bony claw. Should you pass on she calls down curses on your head. If you are wise, you go back and fling her a copper to stop the cold streaks that are shooting up your spine. And these old women were the most trying sights I saw in Ireland.

"Pshaw!" said a friend of mine when I told him this; "these old creatures are actors, and if you would sit down and talk to them, as I have done, they will laugh and joke, and tell you of sons in America who are policemen, and then they will fill black \'dhudeens\' out of your tobacco and ask if you know Mike McGuire who lives in She-ka-gy."

The last trace of comeliness has long left the faces of these repulsive beggars, but there is a type of feminine beauty that comes with years. It is found only where intellect and affection keep step with spiritual desire; and in Ireland, where it is often a crime to think, where superstition stalks, and avarice rules, and hunger crouches, it is very, very rare.

But I met one woman in the Emerald Isle whose hair was snow-white, and whose face seemed to beam a benediction. It was a countenance refined by sorrow, purified by aspiration, made peaceful by right intellectual employment, strong through self-reliance, and gentle by an earnest faith in things unseen. It proved the possible.

When the nations are disarmed, Ireland will take first place, for in fistiana she is supreme.

James Russell Lowell once said that where the "code duello" exists, men lift their hats to ladies, and say "Excuse me" and "If you please." And if Lowell was so bold as to say a good word for the gentlemen who hold themselves "personally responsible," I may venture the remark that men who strike from the shoulder are almost universally polite to strangers.

A woman can do Ireland afoot and alone with perfect safety. Everywhere one finds courtesy, kindness and bubbling good-cheer.

Nineteen-twentieths of all lawlessness in Ireland during the past two hundred years has been directed against the landlord\'s agent. This is a very Irish-like proceeding—to punish the agent for the sins of the principal. When the landlord himself comes over from England he affects a fatherly interest in "his people." He gives out presents and cheap favors, and the people treat him with humble deference. When the landlord\'s agent goes to America he gets a place as first mate on a Mississippi River Steamboat; and before the War he was in demand in the South as overseer. He it is who has taught the "byes" the villainy that they execute; and it sometimes goes hard, for they better the instruction.

But there is one other character that the boys occasionally look after in Ireland, and that is the "Squire." He is a merry wight in tight breeches, red coat, and a number-six hat. He has yellow side-whiskers and \'unts to \'ounds, riding over the wheatfields of honest men. The genuine landlord lives in London; the squire would like to but can not afford it. Of course, there are squires and squires, but the kind I have in mind is an Irishman who tries to pass for an Englishman. He is that curious thing—a man without a country.

There is a theory to the effect that the Universal Mother in giving out happiness bestows on each and all an equal portion—that the beggar trudging along the stony road is as happy as the king who rides by in his carriage. This is a very old belief, and it has been held by many learned men. From the time I first heard it, it appealed to me as truth.

Yet recently my faith has been shaken; for not long ago in New York I climbed the marble steps of a splendid mansion and was admitted by a servant in livery who carried my card on a silver tray to his master. This master had a son in the "Keeley Institute," a daughter in her grave, and a wife who shrank from his presence. His heart was as lonely as a winter night at sea. Fate had sent him a coachman, a butler, a gardener and a footman, but she took his happiness and passed it through a hole in the thatch of a mud-plastered cottage in Ireland, where, each night, six rosy children soundly slept in one straw bed.

In that cottage I stayed two days. There was a stone floor and bare, whitewashed walls; but there was a rosebush climbing over the door, and within health and sunny temper that made mirth with a meal of herbs, and a tenderness that touched to poetry the prose of daily duties.

But it is well to bear in mind that an Irishman in America and an Irishman in Ireland are not necessarily the same thing. Often the first effect of a higher civilization is degeneration. Just as the Chinaman quickly learns big swear-words, and the Indian takes to drink, and certain young men on first reading Emerson\'s essay on "Self-Reliance" go about with a chip on their shoulders, so sometimes does the first full breath of freedom\'s air develop the worst in Paddy instead of the best.

As one tramps through Ireland and makes the acquaintance of a blue-eyed "broth of a bye," who weighs one hundred and ninety, and measures forty-four inches around the chest, he catches glimpses of noble traits and hints of mystic possibilities. There are actions that look like rudiments of greatness gone, and you think of the days when Olympian games were played, and finger meanwhile the silver in your pocket and inwardly place it on this twenty-year-old, pink-faced, six-foot "boy" that stands before you.

In Ireland there are no forests, but in the peat-bogs are found remains of mighty trees that once lifted their outstretched branches to the sun. Are these remains of stately forests symbols of a race of men that, too, have passed away?

In any wayside village of Leinster you can pick you a model for an Apollo. He is in rags, is this giant, and can not read, but he can dance and sing and fight. He has an eye for color, an ear for music, a taste for rhyme, a love of novelty and a thirst for fun. And withal he has blundering sympathy and a pity whose tears are near the surface.

Now, will this fine savage be a victim of arrested development, and sink gradually through weight of years into mere animal stupidity and sodden superstition?

The chances are that this is just what he will do, and that at twenty he will be in his intellectual zenith. Summer does not fulfil the promise of Spring.

But as occasionally there is one of those beautiful, glowing Irish girls who leaves footsteps that endure (in bettered lives), instead of merely transient tracks in mud, so there has been a Burke, a Wellington, an O\'Connell, a Sheridan, a Tom Moore and an Oliver Goldsmith.

While Goldsmith was an Irishman, Swift was an Englishman who chanced to be born of Irish parents in Dublin. In comparing these men Thackeray says: "I think I would rather have had a cold potato and a friendly word from Goldsmith than to have been beholden to the Dean for a guinea and a dinner. No; the Dean was not an Irishman, for no Irishman ever gave but with a kind word and a kind heart."

Charles Goldsmith was a clergyman, passing rich on forty pounds a year. He had a nice little family of eight children, and what became of the seven who went not astray I do not know. But the smallest and homeliest one of the brood became the best-loved man in London. These sickly boys who have been educated only because they were too weak to work—what a record their lives make!

Little Oliver had a pug-nose and bandy legs, and fists not big enough to fight, but he had a large head, and because he was absent-minded, lots of folks thought him dull and stupid, and others were sure he was very bad. In fact, let us admit it, he did steal apples and rifle birds\' nests, and on "the straggling fence that skirts the way," he drew pictures of Paddy Byrne, the schoolmaster, who amazed the rustics by the amount of knowledge he carried in one small head. But Paddy Byrne did not love art for art\'s sake, so he applied the ferule vigorously to little Goldsmith\'s anatomy, with a hope of diverting the lad\'s inclinations from art to arithmetic. I do not think the plan was very successful, for the pockmarked youngster was often adorned with the dunce-cap.

"And, Sir," said Doctor Johnson, many years after, "it must have been very becoming."

It seems that Paddy Byrne "boarded round," and part of the time was under the roof of the rectory. Now we all know that schoolmasters are dual creatures, and that once away from the schoolyard, and having laid aside the robe of office, are often good, honest, simple folks. In his official capacity Paddy Byrne made things very uncomfortable for the pug-nosed little boy, but, like the true Irishman that he was, when he got away from the schoolhouse he was sorry for it. Whether dignity is the mask we wear to hide ignorance, I am not sure, yet when Paddy Byrne was the schoolmaster he was a man severe and stern to view; but when he was plain Paddy Byrne he was a first-rate good fellow.

Evenings he would hold little Oliver on his knee, and instead of helping him in his lessons would tell him tales of robbers, pirates, smugglers—everything and anything in fact that boys like: stories of fairies, goblins, ghosts; lion-hunts and tiger-killing in which the redoubtable Paddy was supposed to have taken a chief part. The schoolmaster had been a soldier and a sailor. He had been in many lands, and when he related his adventures, no doubt he often mistook imagination for memory. But the stories had the effect of choking the desire in Oliver for useful knowledge, and gave instead a thirst for wandering and adventure.

Byrne also had a taste for poetry, and taught the lad to scribble rhymes. Very proud was the boy\'s mother, and very carefully did she preserve these foolish lines.

All this was in the village of Lissoy, County Westmeath; yet if you look on the map you will look in vain for Lissoy. But six miles northeast from Athlone and three miles from Ballymahon is the village of Auburn.

When Goldsmith was a boy Lissoy was:
"Sweet Auburn! loveliest village of the plain, Where health and plenty cheered the laboring swain, Where smiling Spring the earliest visits paid, And parting Summer\'s lingering blooms delayed— Dear lovely bowers of innocence and ease, Seats of my youth, when every sport could please— How often have I loitered o\'er thy green, Where humble happiness endeared each scene; How often have I paused on every charm, The sheltered cot, the cultivated farm, The never-failing brook, the busy mill, The decent church, that topped the neighboring hill, The hawthorn bush, with seats beneath the shade For talking age and whispering lovers made: How often have I blessed the coming day, When toil remitting lent its turn to play, And all the village train from labor free, Led up their sports beneath the spreading tree— While many a pastime circled in the shade, The young contending as the old surveyed; And many a gambol frolicked o\'er the ground, And sleights of art and feats of strength went round."

In America, when a "city" is to be started, the first thing is to divide up the land into town-lots and then sell these lots to whoever will buy. This is a very modern scheme. But in Ireland whole villages belong to one man, and every one in the place pays tribute. Then villages are passed down from generation to generation, and sometimes sold outright, but there is no wish to dispose of corner lots. For when a man lives in your house and you can put him out at any time, he is, of course, much more likely to be civil than if he owns the place.

But it has happened many times that the inhabitants of Irish villages have all packed up and deserted the place, leaving no one but the village squire and that nice man, the landlord\'s agent. The cottages then are turned into sheep-pens or hay-barns. They may be pulled down, or, if they are left standing, the weather looks after that. And these are common sights to the tourist.

Now the landlord, who owned every rood of the village of Lissoy, lived in London. He lived well. He gambled a little, and as the cards did not run his way he got into debt. So he wrote to his agent in Lissoy to raise the rents. He did so, threatened, applied the screws, and—the inhabitants packed up and let the landlord have his village all to himself. Let Goldsmith tell:
"Sweet smiling village, loveliest of the lawn, Thy sports are fled, and all thy charms withdrawn: Amidst thy bowers the tyrant\'s hand is seen, And desolation saddens all thy green; One only master grasps the whole domain, And half a tillage stints thy smiling plain. No more thy glassy brook reflects the day, But choked with sedges, works its weedy way; Along thy glades, a solitary guest, The hollow-sounding bittern guards its nest; Amidst thy desert walks the lapwing flies, And tires their echoes with unvaried cries. Sunk are thy bowers in shapeless ruin all, And the long grass overtops the moldering wall; And, trembling, shrinking from the spoiler\'s hand, Far, far away, thy children leave the land."

A titled gentleman by the name of Napier was the owner of the estate at that time, and as his tenantry had left, he in wrath pull............