IRISH MEMORIES WEST AND EAST 



I. A WESTERN GARDEN 



NO man need hope to escape his fate, and for the dweller in The West 

 the West of Ireland that fate is apt to present itself as a 

 very watery one. Rain is an element in which, for a large 

 portion of his time, he is apt to be more or less continuously 

 immersed. It is about his path, and if not let us hope 

 directly about his bed, at least at no period very far away 

 from it. To what extent meteorological conditions such as 

 these affect the more personal and psychological ones is a 

 big question, far too big for me to enlarge upon in so 

 short an article as this. That to a greater or less extent 

 it does affect them, there can, I think, be no reasonable 

 question. Indeed, when one observes the marked, frequently 

 objurgatory, effect produced where a comparatively momentary 

 immersion is in question, who can doubt that where generation 

 after generation has lived, met, married, died, and been buried 

 under such skies, the external conditions must in fairness be 

 held to account for a good many things that to some austere 

 observers appear to require accounting for. That " the soul 

 makes its own climate" is a comfortable no less than a lofty 

 doctrine. At the same time it is well to recollect that climate 

 is at least equally capable of returning the compliment ! 



It has always appeared to me to be one of the odder char- 

 acteristics of that very watery divinity who presides over the region 

 that when, once in a cycle or so, he relents, and shows symptoms 

 of reformation, the results are a good deal less satisfactory 



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