“‘Wisha, I suppose the best anyone can do is to take all you can get an’ if you want to be a philanthropist, give away what you don’t want,’ ses the grasshopper.
“‘All worth missing I catches,’ ses the whale, ‘an’ all worth catchin’ I misses, like the fisherwoman who missed the fish and caught a crab. How’s things in Europe? I didn’t see the papers this morning.’
“‘Europe is in a bad way,’ ses the grasshopper. ‘She was preaching civilization for centuries so that she might be prepared when war came to annihilate herself.’
“‘It looks that way to me,’ ses the whale. ‘Is there anything else worth while going on in the world?’
“‘There’s the Irish question,’ ses the grasshopper.
“‘Where’s that, Ireland is?’ ses the whale. ‘Isn’t that an island to the west of England?’
“‘No,’ ses the grasshopper, ‘but England is an island to the east of Ireland.’
“‘Wisha,’ ses the whale, ‘it gives me indigestion to hear people talking about Ireland. Sure, I nearly swallowed it up be mistake while I was on a holiday in the Atlantic last year, an’ I’m sorry now that I didn’t.’
“‘An’ I’m sorry that you didn’t try,’ ses the grasshopper. ‘Then you’d know something about indigestion. The less you have to say about Ireland the less you’ll have to be sorry for. Remember that me father came from Cork.’
“‘Can’t I say what I like?’ ses the whale.