104 M Little Farm 



complete. Six of the sixteen have been suckled 

 on the cows, several of them wholly, the others for 

 a time, and any practical farmer can infer how far 

 I might have increased the number by milking all 

 and feeding from the bucket only. My own esti- 

 mate is that I could raise seven good calves per cow 

 as against starving four on the same milk. 



The remarkable efficiency of the expert whom I 

 had in charge of the four, in 1912, has been the 

 subject of an expensive slander action in the 

 .King's Bench, tried at the Four Courts on the 

 4th and 5th of November this year. The action 

 was no affair of mine, except as an unwilling 

 witness, and my expert left the court with his 

 character as free from stain as when he entered it. 

 I have to add to his credit that he is a man much 

 above the average in natural intelligence, and that 

 I never dismissed him on account of any charges 

 against him. I was plundered, but I had no proof 

 that it was by him. 



In Ireland, I have never been able to work 

 smoothly with a servant a great deal more clever 

 than myself, and I dismissed him for his excess 

 of ability, which I could never get to run on the 

 simple lines of the work for which I employed 

 him. You may depend on a Connaught man 

 speaking the truth sometimes, provided he is not 

 on oath, and the cross swearing at the Four Courts 

 was a discovery on a grand scale of our native 

 talent for perjury. On the other hand, I do not 

 remember having seen at work in any country a 

 finer judicial sense than that shown by Judge 

 Molony, though a recent rescue from party 



