The Heather Plot 45 



so on, getting a cheque every time, and each 

 cheque worth more than all the heather that the 

 plot could produce in three hundred years : I am 

 still open to write any number of interesting and 

 instructive articles, long or short, on this half rood, 

 provided the pay is large enough. 



Like the rest of our gifted race, I am afflicted, or 

 fortified, by periods of abnormal indolence, 

 probably due, in my case, as the natural reaction 

 after much longer periods of over activity. At 

 least, that is how I like to explain it, rather than 

 submit to the general cult of normal indolence 

 occasionally disturbed by work. The Irishman is 

 to other men like the racehorse to other horses, 

 tempered to justify his existence by a short, grand 

 display of energy, rather than by regular effort at 

 a supportable rate ; but the racehorse is the most 

 useless of all horses unless kept in " form," and the 

 human temper in Ireland does not like this keeping 

 in " form." See, for instance, our love for soldier- 

 ing and, in soldiering, our preference for the 

 deadliest of the work. This is the temperament 

 which keeps the Irishman gambling with life, and 

 I may as well own that it took me some time, and 

 cost me some pain, to conquer it after my escape 

 from Ireland as a little boy ; for I had been brought 

 up quite in the Irish way, without a sense of duty, 

 unless as derived from the unpleasant consequences 

 of having none. The natural superiority of my 

 parentage and descent seems to be inferred from 

 the fact that I did not distinguish myself as a thief. 



After my return to Ireland, this national 



