The very atmosphere seemed to be full of the incense of welcome that made me feel at home, and when I entered the old church, which had so often been described to me in earlier days by my parents, there came over me an awesome reverence for every stick and stone in it. I could picture in my mind’s eye the very spot where they knelt to pledge their plight and to offer up prayers for their safe voyage to America, whither they were compelled to come to seek that means of subsistence which their own impoverished village could not provide. He who has not felt the thrill of such heart-throbs has missed the holiest emotions of earth.
To visit Ireland and not go through the Gap of Dunloe and take a nip of poteen and goat’s milk at Kate Kearney’s cottage on the way to the Lakes of Killarney, and then to be safely rowed through them by four sturdy oarsmen, with a stop at Dinas Island (for nautical purposes only), would be a loss even as great as not to visit Blarney Castle and kiss the Blarney Stone.
Ever since that eventful day when I hung over the parapet and essayed to take osculatory liberties with that hammer face member of the stone family, there seems to be an elasticity to my tongue and oleaginous flavor to my words that are possessed only by the lovers of art and nature, who believe in the Stone Age and in Memnon’s harp that plays a melody, far away from the habitat of man, to give greeting each morn to the rising sun.
A scene of lasting remembrance to me was the one I witnessed in Queenstown the night before our good ship, “Majestic,” sailed for this port. On every hilltop and from every vantage point one could discern, like a silhouette athwart the blackened night, bonfires brightly burning, each one being the harbinger of friendly greeting to the other and all betokening the emblems of Ireland’s motto, “Hospitality, virtue and courage.”
That scene symbolized in no uncertain meaning the genuine love and sincerity of a loyal people, who made those beacon lights shine forth in luminous colors to give encouragement to the faithful hearts of the blushing maids and the fearless lads, who were about to leave the land of their birth and sever forever the ties of friendship by coming to America to find here a haven of safety from the thralldom and oppression of their home land.
I will conclude by quoting a few lines from Emerson:
Teach me your mood, O patient stars;
Who climb each night the ancient sky,
Leaving no space, no shade, no scars,
No trace of age, no fear to die.