'In wan minute you'll find it in the shmall of your back,' was the laconic reply.
The mere allusion to a query suggests how the British tourist invariably starts trying to discuss the Irish question directly he is across the Channel, and the insoluble part to any Saxon is that half the Irish do not seem to desire a solution at all.
'What a fine country this would be if it were peaceful,' observed a thoughtful Britisher, with a Cook's ticket in his pocket, on Killarney Lake.
'Peace! What would we do with it?' was the scornful reply of his boatman, surprised for once into ejaculating the truth.
Some landlords know how hopeless it is to attempt to prevail against these sons of our epoch.
'It has been of no use to hold up a candle to the hydra-headed devil,' said one landlord to me about his tenants, 'for affability is more expensive than absenteeism. If I say, "Good morning, Tom," the fellow expects twenty per cent. off the rent, and "How's your family?" is considered to imply forty per cent, abatement'—and that cannot be called putting a premium on good fellowship from the landlord's point of view.
I have not said much about the way in which the Irish in America foster insurrection, because it does not come within my own province. But I have before me the type-written essay on the subject composed by a Kerry landlord, who, in his lifetime, had exceptional opportunities of judging of this in New York, and from it I am tempted to take a few sentences as the manuscript is never likely to see the light of print.
'There are three distinct types of the Irish-American Home Ruler, who have been and are even now supporting with their dollars or their eloquence, the "Irish Cause" as it is somewhat vaguely termed throughout the United States. They can be distinguished as follows:—
'1. The American—born Irishman of immediate Irish descent.
'2. The native Irishman who has emigrated from Ireland.
'3. The American Irish-American of long American descent, who, though not inheriting a drop of Irish blood, is yet a vigorous if not obstreperous ally of the Irish party in America. This last is the most striking of the three, as on the face of it, he would not appear to have any logical raison d'être as a political entity, but in reality exerts a powerful influence in favour of "the Cause."
'One phase of the methods favoured by Irish-American Home Rulers is the ingenuity with which cable reports, as printed in the newspapers, are utilised for platform purposes. Let an account be flashed under the Atlantic descriptive of some agrarian demonstration in Ireland, which having been declared illegal, is dispersed by military. Forthwith the opportunity is seized, and on some public platform or at some big banquet, the fervid orator poses as the champion of human liberty. "Another British outrage upon the Irish people! A brutal and licentious soldiery let loose to gag free speech and prevent, at the point of the bayonet, the exercise of the rights of freeman. Thank God, that you and I my Irish-American fellow-citizens, are living in this glorious republic, where such things are impossible!"