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. One gentleman defined it as ceremonious manners, the result
of early training; while another objected that that was only the veneer
of manners, as all true politeness arose from the heart. I listened
awhile and then spoke across the seat to a decent, dejected looking man
with a little bundle beside him tied up in a blue and white check
handkerchief. "Yes, he was going to England to look for work; many had
to go for the work was not to be had at home." "The rents were so high,
and the taxes, what with one thing and another, there was a new cut
always coming heavier than the last." "The people are being crushed out
of the country very fast, and that was God's truth." "And you are from
America? It is a fine country they say.
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