On Our Return To Liverpool, We Stayed For A Few Hours At Queenstown, Taking In Coal, And The Passengers Landed That They Might Stretch Their Legs And Look About Them.

I also went ashore at the dear old place which I had known well in other days, when the people were not too grand to call it Cove, and were contented to run down from Cork in river steamers, before the Passage railway was built.

I spent a pleasant summer there once in those times: God be with the good old days! And now I went ashore at Queenstown, happy to feel that I should be again in a British isle, and happy also to know that I was once more in Ireland. And when the people came around me as they did, I seemed to know every face and to be familiar with every voice. It has been my fate to have so close an intimacy with Ireland, that when I meet an Irishman abroad I always recognize in him more of a kinsman than I do in your Englishman. I never ask an Englishman from what county he comes, or what was his town. To Irishmen I usually put such questions, and I am generally familiar with the old haunts which they name. I was happy therefore to feel myself again in Ireland, and to walk round, from Queenstown to the river at Passage, by the old way that had once been familiar to my feet.

Or rather I should have been happy if I had not found myself instantly disgraced by the importunities of my friends.

Enter page number Go  Previous Next
Page 528 of 531
Words from 141309 to 141577 of 142339