FROM LONDON TO NEW YORK. 241 



people, with whom I at once felt that " touch of nat- 

 ure " which " makes all the world kin," and my leave- 

 taking was warm and hearty accordingly. 



Through the wind and the darkness I threaded my 

 way to the wharf, and in less than two hours after- 

 ward was a most penitent voyager, and fitfully join- 

 ing in that doleful gastriloqual chorus that so often 

 goes up from the cabins of those channel steamers. 



I hardly know why I went to Ireland, except it 

 was to indulge the few drops of Irish blood in my 

 veins, and may be also with a view to shorten my 

 sea voyage by a day. I also felt a desire to see one 

 or two literary men there, and in this sense my jour- 

 ney was eminently gratifying ; but so far from short- 

 ening my voyage by a day, it lengthened it by three 

 days, that being the time it took me to recover from 

 the effects of it ; and as to the tie of blood, I think it 

 must nearly all have run out, for I felt but few con- 

 genital throbs while in Ireland. 



The Englishman at home is a much more lova- 

 ble animal than the Englishman abroad, but Pat in 

 Ireland is even more of a pig than in this country. 

 Indeed, the squalor and poverty, and cold, skinny 

 wretchedness one sees in Ireland, and (what freezes 

 our sympathies) the groveling, swiny shiftlessness 

 that pervades these hovels, no traveler can be pre- 

 pared for. It is the bare prose of misery, the unhe- 

 roic of tragedy. There is not one redeeming or miti- 

 gating feature. 



Railway traveling in Ireland is not so rapid or so 

 16 



