226 WINTER SUNSHINE 



all nations, and which led Carlyle to say of his own 

 countrymen that they w^ere becoming daily more 

 "flat, stupid, and mammonish." Yet I am per- 

 suaded that in our case it is traceable also to the 

 leanness and depletion of our social and convivial 

 instincts, and to the fact that the material cares of 

 life are more serious and engrossing with us than 

 with any other people. 



I spent part of a day at Cork, wandering about 

 the town, threading my way through the back 

 streets and alleys, and seeing life reduced to fewer 

 makeshifts than I had ever before dreamed of. I 

 went through, or rather skirted, a kind of second- 

 hand market, where the most sorry and dilapidated 

 articles of clothing and household utensils were 

 offered for sale, and where the cobblers were cob- 

 bling up old shoes that would hardly hold together. 

 Then the wretched old women one sees, without 

 any sprinkling of young ones, — youth and age alike 

 bloomless and unlovely. 



In a meadow on the hills that encompass the city, 

 I found the American dandelion in bloom, and some 

 large red clover, and started up some skylarks as I 

 might start up the field sparrows in our own up- 

 lying fields. 



Is the magpie a Celt and a Catholic? I saw not 

 one in England, but plenty of them in France, and 

 again when I reached Ireland. 



At Queenstown I awaited the steamer from Liver- 

 pool, and about nine o'clock in the morning was 

 delighted to see her long black form moving up the 



