monly in use in the south of Ireland, and are known respectively as "inside" and "outside" cars. A very nicelooking lady in Cork engaged an outside car to take her to the house of a friend. As the day was rather chilly, the friend met her with the exclamation, "Have you really come on an outside car?" Instantly the driver replied, "Why, thin, ma'am, is it inside you'd be after puttin' her -a handsome lady that could bear inspection!"

Another characteristic feature of Irish life is the easy freedom of manners and the familiarity of intercourse between strangers. Among the people, certainly, the stranger is never received in Ireland with that cold, distant, and suspicious demeanor with which he is too often. greeted in the sister countries. In Ireland the stranger is treated confidingly as a friend until he has done something wrong; in England he is regarded with distrust until he has established his good character. I have often seen, in the south of Ireland, carters pull up their wagons or vans, and walk into a house without ceremony, beyond the salutation, "God save all here," go over to the fireplace, and take up a burning sod of turf with which to light their pipes; and then were ready, with native loquacity, to enter into conversation with any members of the household present.

There is a very humorous medieval Irish story which I am disposed to think is a satire on the talkativeness of the race. Three hermits sought peace and quietude in a valley far remote from the haunts of men. At the end of a year one remarked, "It's a fine life we are having here." After another year the second hermit replied, "It is." When a third year had elapsed, the remaining hermit broke into the conversation with the threat, "If I cannot get peace here, I'll go back to the world!"

Simplicity is also a trait in the Irish character. A dispensary doctor told me that he had occasion to prescribe two pills for a sick laborer, which he sent him by his wife in a small box, bearing the directions, "The whole to be taken immediately." On visiting his patient subsequently, the doctor was surprised to learn that the desired effect had not been produced by the pills. He asked the man's wife if she had really given her husband the medicine. “I did, doctor," she replied; "but maybe the lid hasn't come

off yet." The sick man had been made to swallow pills and box together! Mrs. Murphy's husband was extremely ill, so she called in a doctor, and then anxiously inquired as to the sufferer's state. "I am sorry to say, madam," replied the doctor gravely, " that your husband is dying by inches." "Well, docthor," said Mrs. Murphy, with an air of resignation, "wan good thing is, me poor husband is six feet three in his stockin'-feet, so he 'll lasht some time yit." It is a grand thing to have-as the Irish peasants have— faith in the doctor! What wonders it can work is shown by the following story. An Irishman, who had a great respect for the medical profession, but had had the good fortune never to have required a doctor's services in his life before, was one day taken ill. A doctor was sent for. With eyes big with astonishment, the patient watched the doctor take his clinical thermometer from its case. As the doctor slipped it under his patient's armpit, he told him "to keep it there a second or two." Paddy lay still, almost afraid to breathe, and, when the doctor took it out, he was astonished to hear his patient exclaim, "I do feel a dale better after that, sur!"

Stories of the simpleness and artlessness of the people are very entertaining. A well-known society lady, residing at Cork, sent a letter to the militia barracks, requesting the pleasure of Captain A.'s company at dinner on a certain day. The letter must have got into the wrong hands, for the answer rather astonished the hostess. It ran: "Private Hennessy and Private O'Brien are unable to accept, owing to their being on duty; but the remainder of Captain A.'s company will have much pleasure in accepting Mrs. B.'s hospitality." Some years ago the keeper of the lighthouse on Tory Island (an Englishman) got married to a London girl, and his wife had, among other effects, a small light pianette sent after her to her new home. By-and-by news reached the island that the instrument was on the mainland, and two islanders were dispatched in a lugger to fetch it across. The lighthouse keeper and his wife were awaiting the arrival of the pianette, which was to brighten the long winter evenings; but, to their disappointment, they saw the boat returning without the instrument. "Where's the pianette?" shouted the lighthouse keeper when the lugger had got within hailing distance.

"It's all right," replied one of the boatmen; "shure, we 're towin' it behind us!" The inhabitants of Tory Island are an extremely simple and primitive people. Lady Chatterton, who made a visit she paid to Ireland thirty years ago the subject of a book, describes the mingled astonishment and alarm she saw on the face of a peasant from the island as he mounted the stairs of a house on the mainland.

Another characteristic of the peasantry is their carefulness about the superscription of the letters they commit to the post. They find it difficult to believe in the capability of the post-office authorities to deliver safely a letter, outside their own immediate postal district, unless it is addressed with the utmost fullness of detail. The manager of a large hotel in Dublin showed me the envelope of a letter received by one of the maids of the establishment from her old mother in County Mayo. The superscription was as follows:

"For Margaret Maloney,

Rotunda Hotel.

All modern improvements. Lift. Electric lights. Terms

moderate.

Tariff on application to manager.

Sackville Street, Dublin, Ireland."

The old lady with rural simplicity had faithfully copied all the printed details at the top of the sheet of the hotel notepaper on which her daughter had written to her.

Perhaps it is only in Ireland-a country where everything is taken for granted—that an incident like the following is possible. During the meeting of the British Association in Dublin in 1871, a visit was paid by the ethnological section to the island of Arranmore, off the coast of Galway, famous for its magnificent cyclopean ruin, the Dun Angus. Among the other objects of interest pointed out for the admiration of the assembled savants was a rude specimen of those domica buildings of a beehive form, variously called oratories or blockaunes. They are stone-roofed structures of narrow proportions, with low entrances, and containing one or more small chambers. While a famous Irish archeologist, who acted the cicerone, was descanting on the architectural peculiarities and the profound antiquity of the structure, which,

perhaps, he said, was once the residence of Firbolg or Danaun kings, one of the excursionists on the outside of the group sought such information about the mysterious building as he could gather from the crowd of wondering natives who were congregated around. "Isn't that a very ancient building now?" he said to an Arranite. "I suppose it's a thousand years old at least?" "Oh, no, yer honner," was the reply. "Shure, it's no more than four or five years since Tim Bourke built it for a donkey that he do be workin' in the winter."

The national characteristics are so diffused that the same traits are to be found in the houses of the gentrytempered, somewhat, by education and training—as in the cabins of the peasantry. An amusing illustration of what "a ruling passion," the passion for hunting and racing is among the well-to-do classes in Ireland, occurred in a speech on the state of Ireland delivered by Lord Stanley in 1844. He pointed out, amid the laughter of the House of Commons, that an affidavit respecting the striking out of Roman Catholics from the panel from which the jury which tried O'Connell and other Repeal leaders was selected, was signed by William Kemmis, "Clerk of the Course," instead of "Clerk of the Crown." Chief Justice Doherty used to relate a strange experience which befell him during a visit to a country house. His friend, the host, sent a car to the railway station to bring him to the place. He had not gone far when the horse became very restive, and finally upset the vehicle into a ditch. The judge asked the driver how long the animal had been in harness. "Half an hour, sur," replied the man. "I mean, how long since he was first put in harness?" said the judge. "Shure, I've tould you, half an hour, sur," answered the driver, "an' the masther said if he carried ye safe he'd buy him." I was one evening in the Queen's Theater, Dublin, during the week of the famous August Horse Show, when the Irish metropolis is crowded with visitors from every province. An elderly country gentleman, in pronounced "horsey" attire, came into the stalls; and the "gods," as is their wont, began to chaff him. He bore their remarks in silence for a time, and then, rising in his seat and looking up to the gallery, waved his hand for silence. "Gentlemen," he cried, "if you don't

stop that noise, I'll lave the theater." A shout of laughter greeted his humorous threat from all parts of the house, and he was left in peace by the "gods" for the remainder of the evening.

The Irish peasant will never confess to ignorance if he can at all escape it. This characteristic is also due to his desire to be on the best of terms with everybody. Some years ago the Fishery Commissioners held at Kilrush an inquiry into the condition of the fisheries of the lower Shannon. One old witness was very discursive, and inclined to aver everything. "Are there any whales about there?" asked one of the commissioners sarcastically. "Is it whales?" exclaimed the witness, who did not notice that the commissioner was humbugging him. "Shure ye may see thim be the dozen sphoutin' about like water engines all over the place." Another commissioner gravely inquired whether there were dogfish there. "Faix, you 'd say so, if ye passed the night at Carrigaholt. We can't sleep for the barkin' of thim," replied the witness. Lastly, the third commissioner asked if flying fish abounded in the river. The old man's marvelous imagination and rapid invention were by no means exhausted, for he replied, “Arrah, if we didn't put the shutters up ivery night there wouldn't be a whole pane of glass left in the windies from the crathurs beatin' agin thim." A gamekeeper in County Waterford, who was very proud of the woods under his charge, was wont to indulge in the most extravagant accounts of the quantity of every description of game to be found there. A gentleman once asked him, for amusement's sake, "Are there any paradoxes to be found here, Pat?" Without the slightest hesitation the keeper replied, "Oh, thim's very rare in these parts, yer honner; but ye might find two or three of thim sometimes on the sands whin the tide 's out."

"I suppose there are no lobsters in Ireland, Pat?" said a traveler. "Lobsters, is it? Shure the shores is red wid them."

These harmless and very amusing exaggerations may undoubtedly be traced to the fancifulness of the Irish peasantry, their excessive geniality and courtesy, and their desire to please. John Wesley, the famous founder of the Methodist sect, who visited our country about the middle