STRAY-AWAYS 



IN EXPLANATION 



We have been assured on sufficiently high authority 

 that the daily round and the common task furnish as 

 much as we ought to ask. The question inevitably 

 arises, why should we not ask for more if we want it ? 

 Personally, the thought of a stereotyped daily round 

 is abhorrent, and nothing is less inspiring than a 

 common task. 



These sketches and studies represent the joyful 

 moments of revolt of two working women, moments 

 when wandering voices whispered editorially in their 

 ear, beguiling them, like the distant call of the horn 

 to the ploughman, to leave the long furrow, and to 

 pull the horse out of the plough, and to ride a bit of 

 a gallop over country of which, more often than not, 

 they knew only that the going was deep and the 

 fences blind. 



But these excursions had for them the attraction, 

 imperious to an Irish mind, of being any one else's 

 work more suitably than theirs. Is there, for example, 

 any Irish man or woman who could resist accepting 

 an offer to make a harangue on Ireland, her politics, 

 or her people ? Or who, their normal task being 

 fiction, could fail to find allurement in laying down 

 the law in matters of fact ? Let any one attempt to 

 disintegrate and recreate fact as fiction and see if 



