48 My Little Farm 



not escaped from Ireland and learned, to think, I 

 could sit down in Mayo and make more by writing 

 about my half rood of heather than our ordinary 

 farmer can make from sixty acres of our best land ? 

 After long study and obviously intimate experience 

 my advice to any ambitious young Irishman is : 

 Get away from Ireland at once, before you are old 

 enough to get fixed useless for life, and unless you 

 can recover the use of your faculties abroad, stay 

 away ; but if you have really learned to think, and 

 got character enough to support your thinking, 

 come back, and you will find Ireland the most 

 fascinating country in the world, where a com- 

 fortable income can be made by preserving half a 

 rood of heather from the encroachments of 

 reclamation. 



JVIy heather plot has made men think, in a 

 country where thought is " danger." It is 

 exactly like a miracle, achieved without apparent 

 effort, and I keep every side of it as rich and green 

 as possible to accentuate the contrast. If I told 

 them it was done miraculously, I have no doubt 

 that large numbers could believe in it, but I am 

 reduced to mere reason. When they ask me to 

 explain the transformation, I am forced to talk 

 chemistry, but chemistry implies thought and 

 mental freedom ; therefore, my explanation is 

 " dangerous," and so is my plot a standing 

 example of miraculous effects from merely natural 

 causes. I have no desire whatever to usurp the 

 miraculous function, and it is really not my fault 

 if the natural has here contracted the limits of the 



