There Are Vistas Opening Among The Trees Giving Glimpses Of The Brightest Green And Dashes Of Waters Like Bits Of Captured Sky.

I gave a glance at the owner, tall and stately, with ruddy, pleasant face and kind blue eye, and acknowledged that he looked every inch an English squire.

With many thanks for his kindness we took our departure. Were glad to hear from both friend and car driver that nothing of cruelty and oppression could be laid to the charge of this man. As I stood beside him at his own door, drawing all of the beauty I could into my soul through my eyes to carry away with me, I thought if I were born into that place with its associations, could I, would I mar any corner of it to make a homestead for starving Thady, ragged Biddy, and the too numerous children? Who knows what transformation might lie in the pride and power of possession!

There was a single laborer working before the castle raking up the gravel walk, I think. "I would he were fatter!" If he were only in as good condition as the beautiful dogs of superior breed which we saw in the castle yard; but the dogs are fed at the expense of the proprietor of this fair domain, the thin laborer at his own. We returned by another way. After we left the grounds we noticed with sad eyes the miserable cabins and barren fields at his gates. People of the upper, middle and comfortable classes are so used to horrible cabins, thin laborers, old women, barefoot, toothless, ragged and wretched, begging by the wayside to keep out of the dreaded workhouse, that the sight makes not the slightest impression. People tell me over and over again that they deserve their poverty, for it is the result of extravagance and drunkenness. This assertion makes one stare and then consider whose faces show the greater evidence of the action of different liquors. It would be an easy matter in a national gathering to pick out the class and the strata of society that is the support of the liquor traffic in Ireland.

XXXV.

WORKHOUSES - THE POOR LAW - A REASONABLE SUSPECT.

Returning from Rappa Castle we must pass the Ballina workhouse. My friend had business there. As it was Board day, and I had about an hour to spare, I thought I would look in and see what I thought of it in the light of a possible refuge for many evicted ones. There were some wretched looking people, applicants for out-door relief, waiting about the entrance when we went in. I have been informed and have seen it confirmed in newspaper reports of the proceedings of Boards of Guardians, that it is a rule of universal application by every means possible to discourage out-door relief in every form. "Let the poor come into the union altogether," is the spirit that actuates the Boards of Guardians, so it was pointed out to me that these applicants for out- door relief had small chance of success.

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