Ten to one you agree with him, and give him an additional threepence or sixpence, which he receives with enthusiastic wishes that your life may be prolonged to an indefinite extent.
Our party patronized the four-wheelers extensively, but never had the hardihood to venture on an “outside” in daylight. We were averse to public display. During our stay in Ireland we tried the “outside” on one occasion only; then it was against our will. Fortunately, it was at night. We reached Dublin, from a visit to some friends in the south, by the 10 p.m. train. All the coupés and covered cars were engaged. Our lodgings were about two miles from the railway station. Walking, with the travelling “traps” necessary on British railroads, was out of the question. We were compelled to take an “outside.”
“How do you feel?” I asked the Lady from Idaho after we were seated and had started.
“Rather out of place,” she replied. “I feel as if I ought to be a little intoxicated.”
Her answer expressed my feeling exactly. It seemed to me that I was going “on the biggest kind of a spree.”
Railroads furnish rapid transit to suburban retreats where reside professional and commercial men whose business is in the city. One can live in the pleasant little village of Kingstown, the harbor of Dublin, six miles from the city, and reach Dublin in fifteen minutes. Trains run each way every half-hour. It has taken me an hour and a half to come from Eighty-sixth Street to the City Hall by the street-cars. This was when we met with no accidents, and made a good trip. But New York has the worst locomotive arrangements of any city in the world, and immeasurably the dearest.
I had counted upon finding a great many beggars in Ireland. I expected, whenever I alighted from coach or car, to have to run the gauntlet of a crowd of hungry petitioners. I was most agreeably disappointed. During my stay in Ireland I was asked for charity in the public streets only once. It was in Dublin, by a wretched-looking woman with a sick child.
A fine view of Dublin is obtained from one of the eminences in the Phœnix Park. It takes in the entire line of quays. This view has something of a reduced and smoke-blackened effect of Paris. The Phœnix is one of the finest and most extensive parks in the world. It covers nearly eighteen hundred acres. It is true that art has not done much for it, but nature has done a great deal. It possesses some of the most beautiful characteristics of English park scenery—beautiful green lawns, dotted with clumps of trees. Large herds of deer course swiftly over the uplands, or stop in groups, half frightened, to reconnoitre, in a coy side-glance, the intruder into their domain. Charming rides, drives, and walks invite the dwellers in the city to pure air and healthful exercise. A portion of the park is railed off into a “People's Garden,” where poor as well as rich have free ingress, and can gladden their town-weary eyes with the sight of growing shrubs and budding flowers, and graceful water-fowl sailing on the pretty meres. A lofty monument to the Duke of Wellington—not possessed of any artistic grace, [pg 533] however—crowns one of the knolls. On the right of the main avenue is the Viceregal Lodge. Near it is the column, mounted by a phœnix, erected by the celebrated Lord Chesterfield, who first caused the park to be thrown open to the people. The English Government never sent to Ireland a viceroy who had less prejudices against the people he was sent to govern. Somewhere in his celebrated letters he speaks of “his friends the Irish,” and says: “They always liked me, and I liked them.” The Viceregal Lodge, with its dependent buildings, is a delightful summer retreat. I do not wonder that the viceroy should be glad to see the return of spring, that he might get away from the poor locality in which the castle is situated. The Hibernian school for soldiers' children is situated at the lower extremity of the park.
The Zoölogical Gardens are not far from the King's Bridge entrance. The collection is a fair one, but the damp climate does not agree with the animals, and they have the same woe-begone appearance as their fellow-sufferers in the Regent's Park. The elephants have a faded, mildewed appearance. The furred animals are suggestive of worn-out hair trunks. In neither the Dublin nor the London Gardens do they look so bright and sleek as, under the brighter sky and more genial atmosphere of Paris, in the Jardin des Plantes and the Jardin d'Acclimatation. The collection of lions is good. Among them is a noble leo which the keeper informed us was born in the gardens.
“Why, he is an Irish lion!” said one of our party, hazarding a gentle joke. There was no response from the keeper. Not the merest ripple of a smile. Decidedly, the Irish in Ireland are becoming a serious people.