lady of ninety-three, from Mullinavat, is here primarily for her

health, and secondarily to dispose of threepenny shares in an
antique necklace, which is to be raffled for the benefit of a Roman

Catholic chapel. Then we have a fishing gentleman and his bride
from Glasgow, and occasional bicyclers who come in for a dinner, a

tea, or a lodging. These three comforts of a home are sometimes
quite indistinguishable with us: the tea is frequently made up of

fragments of dinner, and the beds are always sprinkled with crumbs.
Their source is a mystery, unless they fall from the clothing of the

chambermaids, who frequently drop hairpins and brooches and buttons
between the sheets, and strew whisk brooms and scissors under the

blankets.
We have two general servants, who are supposed to do all the work of

the house, and who are as amiable and obliging and incapable as they
well can be. Oonah generally waits upon the table, and Molly cooks;

at least she cooks now and then when she is not engaged with Peter
in the vegetable garden or the stable. But whatever happens, Mrs.

Mullarkey, as a descendant of one of the Irish kings, is to be
looked upon only as an inspiring ideal, inciting one to high and

ever higher flights of happy incapacity. Benella ostensibly
oversees the care of our rooms, but she is comparativelyhelpless in

such a kingdom of misrule. Why demand clean linen when there is
none; why seek for a towel at midday when it is never ironed until

evening; how sweep when a broom is all inadequate to the task?
Salemina's usual remark, on entering a humble hostelry anywhere, is:

"If the hall is as dirty as this, what must the kitchen be! Order
me two hard-boiled eggs, please!"

"Use your 'science,' Benella," I say to that discouraged New England
maiden, who has never looked at her philosophy from its practical or

humorous side. "If the universe is pure mind and there is no
matter, then this dirt is not a real thing, after all. It seems, of

course, as if it were thicker under the beds and bureaus than
elsewhere, but I suppose our evil thoughts focus themselves there

rather than in the centre of the room. Similarly, if the broom
handle is broken, deny the dirt away--denial is much less laborious

than sweeping; bring 'the science' down to these simple details of
everyday life, and you will make converts by dozens, only pray don't

remove, either by suggestion or any cruder method, the large key
that lies near the table leg, for it is a landmark; and there is

another, a crochetneedle, by the washstand, devoted to the same
purpose. I wish to show them to the Mullarkey when we leave."

Under our educationalregime, the 'metaphysical' veneer, badly
applied in the first place, and wholly unsuited to the foundation

material, is slowly disappearing, and our Benella is gradually
returning to her normal self. Perhaps nothing has been more useful

to her development than the confusion of Knockarney House.
Our windows are supported on decrepit tennis rackets and worn-out

hearth brushes; the blinds refuse to go up or down; the chairs have
weak backs or legs; the door knobs are disassociated from their

handles. As for our food, we have bacon and eggs, with coffee made,
I should think, of brown beans and liquorice, for breakfast; a bit

of sloppy chicken, or fish and potato, with custardpudding or
stewed rhubarb, for dinner; and a cold supper of--oh! anything that

occurs to Molly at the last moment. Nothing ever occurs either to
Molly or Oonah at any previous moment, and in that they are merely

conforming to the universal habit. Last week, when we were starting
for Valencia Island, the Ballyfuchsia stationmaster was absent at a

funeral; meantime the engine had 'gone cold on the engineer,' and
the train could not leave till twelve minutes after the usual time.

We thought we must have consulted a wrong time-table, and asked
confirmation of a man who seemed to have some connection with the

railway. Goaded by his ignorance, I exclaimed, "Is it possible you
don't know the time the trains are going?"

"Begorra, how should I?" he answered. "Faix, the thrains don't
always be knowin' thimselves!"

The starting of the daily 'Mail Express' from Ballyfuchsia is a time
of great excitement and confusion, which on some occasions increases

to positive panic. The stationmaster, armed with a large dinner-
bell, stands on the platform, wearing an expression of anxiety

ludicrously unsuited to the situation. The supreme moment had
really arrived some time before, but he is waiting for Farmer

Brodigan with his daughter Kathleen, and the Widdy Sullivan, and a
few other local worthies who are a 'thrifle late on him.' Finally

they come down the hill, and he paces up and down the station
ringing the bell and uttering the warning cry, "This thrain never

shtops! This thrain never shtops! This thrain never shtops!"--
giving one the idea that eternity, instead of Killarney, must be the

final destination of the passengers. The clock in the Ballyfuchsia
telegraph and post office ceases to go for twenty-four hours at a

time, and nobody heeds it, while the postman always has a few
moments' leisure to lay down his knapsack of letters and pitch

quoits with the Royal Irish Constabulary. However, punctuality is
perhaps an individual virtue more than an exclusively national one.

I am not sure that we Americans would not be more agreeable if we
spent a month in Ireland every year, and perhaps Ireland would

profit from a month in America.
At the Brodigans' (Mr. Brodigan is a large farmer, and our nearest

neighbour) all the clocks are from ten to twenty minutes fast or
slow; and what a peaceful place it is! The family doesn't care when

it has its dinner, and, mirabile dictu, the cook doesn't care
either!

"If you have no exact time to depend upon, how do you catch trains?"
I asked Mr. Brodigan.

"Sure that's not an everyday matter, and why be foostherin' over it?
But we do, four times out o' five, ma'am!"

"How do you like it that fifth time when you miss it?"
"Sure it's no more throuble to you to miss it the wan time than to

hurry five times! A clock is an overrated piece of furniture, to my
mind, Mrs. Beresford, ma'am. A man can ate whin he's hungry, go to

bed whin he's sleepy, and get up whin he's slept long enough; for
faith and it's thim clocks he has inside of himself that don't need

anny winding!"
"What if you had a business appointment with a man in the town, and

missed the train?" I persevered.
"Trains is like misfortunes; they never come singly, ma'am.

Wherever there's a station the trains do be dhroppin' in now and
again, and what's the differ which of thim you take?"

"The man who is waiting for you at the other end of the line may not
agree with you," I suggested.

"Sure, a man can always amuse himself in a town, ma'am. If it's
your own business you're coming on, he knows you'll find him; and if

it's his business, then begorra let him find you!" Which quite
reminded me of what the Irish elf says to the English elf in Moira

O'Neill's fairy story: "A waste of time? Why, you've come to a
country where there's no such thing as a waste of time. We have no

value for time here. There is lashings of it, more than anybody
knows what to do with."

I suppose there is somewhere a golden mean between this complete
oblivion of time and our feverish American hurry. There is a

'tedious haste' in all people who make wheels and pistons and
engines, and live within sound of their everlasting buzz and whir

and revolution; and there is ever a disposition to pause, rest, and
consider on the part of that man whose daily tasks are done in

serene collaboration with dew and rain and sun. One cannot hurry
Mother Nature very much, after all, and one who has much to do with

her falls into a peaceful habit of mind. The mottoes of the two
nations are as well rendered in the vernacular as by any formal or

stilted phrases. In Ireland the spoken or unspokenslogan is, 'Take
it aisy'; in America, 'Keep up with the procession'; and between

them lie all the thousand differences of race, climate, temperament,
religion, and government.

I don't suppose there is a nation on the earth better developed on
what might be called the train-catching side than we of the Big

Country, and it is well for us that there is born every now and
again among us a dreamer who is (blessedly) oblivious of time-tables