26 THE SOUTH COUNTRY 



year for little things : it seems a charity to put a roof 

 over his head and clip his hair. He has no wisdom; by 

 nothing has he soiled what gifts were given to him at his 

 birth. The dreams will not pass him by. They come 

 to give him that confidence by which he lives in spite of 

 men's and children's contumely. 



How little do we know of the business of the earth, 

 not to speak of the universe; of time, not to speak of 

 eternity. It was not by taking thought that man survived 

 the mastodon. The acts and thoughts that will serve the 

 race, that will profit this commonwealth of things that 

 live in the sun, the air, the earth, the sea, now and 

 through all time, are not known and never will be known. 

 The rumour of much toil and scheming and triumph 

 may never reach the stars, and what we value not at all, 

 are not conscious of, may break the surface of eternity 

 with endless ripples of good. We know not by what we 

 survive. There is much philosophy in that Irish tale 

 of the poor blind woman who recovered her sight at St. 

 Brigit's well. " Did I say more prayers than the rest ? 

 Not a prayer. I was young in those days. I suppose 

 she took a liking to me, maybe because of my name being 

 Brigit the same as her own." ^ Others went unrelieved 

 away that day. We are as ignorant still. Hence the 

 batlike fears about immortality. We wish to prolong 

 what we can see and touch and talk of, and knowing that 

 clothes and flesh and other perishing things may not pass 

 over the borders of death with us, we give up all, as if 

 forsooth the undertaker and the gravedigger had arch- 



^ A Book of Saints and IVonders, by Lady Gregory^ 



