242 AN OCTOBER ABROAD. 



cheap as in England. Neither are the hotels as good 

 or as clean, or the fields so well kept, or the look of 

 the country so thrifty and peaceful. The dissatisfac- 

 tion of the people is in the very air. Ireland looks 

 sour and sad. She looks old, too, as do all those 

 countries beyond seas, old in a way that the Ameri- 

 can is a stranger to. It is not the age of nature, the 

 unshaken permanence of the hills through long peri- 

 ods of time, but the weight of human years and 

 human sorrows, as if the earth sympathized with man 

 and took on his attributes and infirmities. 



I did not go much about Dublin, and the most 

 characteristic thing I saw there were those queer, 

 uncomfortable dog carts, a sort of Irish bull on wheels, 

 with the driver on one side balancing the passenger 

 on the other, and the luggage occupying the seat of 

 safety between. It comes the nearest to riding on 

 horseback, and on a side-saddle at that, of any vehicle 

 traveling I ever did. 



I stopped part of a day at Mallow, an old town on 

 the Blackwater, in one of the most fertile agricultural 

 districts of Ireland. The situation is fine, and an 

 American naturally expects to see a charming rural 

 town planted with trees and filled with clean, com- 

 fortable homes ; but he finds instead a wretched place, 

 smitten with a plague of filth and mud, and offering 

 but one object upon which the eye can dwell with 

 pleasure, and tnat is the ruins of an old castle, " Mal- 

 low Castle over Blackwater," which dates back to the 

 time of Queen Elizabeth. It stands amid noble trees 



