These grounds
extend for miles, and are as beautiful as gorgeous trees, green grass,
dark woods, waters that leap and flash, spanned by rustic bridges, can
make them. There are winding walks leading through the green fields,
under trees, into woods, up hill and down, into shady glens, where you
might wander for miles and lose yourself in green-wood solitudes. Crowds
of Westport folk, in the calm evening, saunter through the grounds and
enjoy their beauty.
The little town has a subdued expression of prosperity. You feel
conscious that some business is going on that enables the inhabitants of
the town to live comfortably and to dress respectably. You hear of the
mills of the Messrs. Livingstone, of their business in trading and land-
owning, until you are convinced that they are the centre round which
this little world revolves.
I had a lady pointed out to me here as being in such embarrassed
circumstances, owing to the non-payment of rent, that her son was
obliged to join the police force to earn a living. I heard also great
sympathy expressed for another gentleman in Dublin who has many sons,
whom he has brought up to do nothing, and who has been reduced by the
strike against rent to absolute poverty. I am told that banks in Dublin
are glutted with family silver left as security for loans. These people
are to be pitied, for poverty is poverty in purple or in rags; but when
poverty comes to actual want, it is still more pitiful.
XLI.
GOING TO ENGLAND FOR WORK - CANADA AND AMERICA.
I have been going against the stream on my travels. I am reminded,
incessantly that I should have begun at Dublin. Going backward, as I am
doing, the orthodox route is to Leenane, passing Erriff and the Devil's
Mother, but the regular cars were not yet running, I was told, nor were
they likely to run this summer, as, owing to the exaggerated reports of
outrage, tourists are not expected in any numbers. Was persuaded to take
a special car to go by Leenane round the coast. Would have liked to do
so, but not to bear all the expense myself. The further west the more
expensive the car, I find. Instead, I returned to Castlebar, and on to
Balla. Balla is the small town where the Land League was born.
In the compartment to which I was consigned there were some gentlemen,
for gentlemen and ladies of very great apparent respectability do travel
in the cars devoted to the humbler people; there were also some
respectable looking laborers who were going over to England to look for
work. A discussion arose in our compartment as to what constituted
politeness.
