A DELEGATE OF THE NATIONAL LEAGUE 



His new workshop is a disaster in the landscape, 

 an incident unsurpassingly dreary even in a region 

 whose buildings cannot be said to sweeten the rigours 

 of bog-stretches and mountain-side; a structure to 

 which no beholder will grudge the award of being the 

 most unattractive in the parish, even after attention 

 has been given to the claims of the chapel and the 

 national schools. It is its fate to have many beholders, 

 swinging and jolting by, most of them on the Conne- 

 mara mail-cars, within a few yards of it, where it 

 commands the entrance of a boreen, and noting it, 

 no doubt, with all the curious gaze of the tourist. 

 To these it will readily recall the goods-store of any 

 railway-station on their journey in its solidity of stone 

 and slate and gloomy adherence to the necessary; 

 and those of a Charles Dickens turn of mind will 

 discern the sore-eyed stare imparted to it by the 

 setting of red bricks round its windows. But, 

 fortunately for it, it has another class of beholders, 

 less practised of eye and altogether innocent of such 

 imaginings. To the people in the knot of cabins 

 among tlie trees beliind, it is a thing of utmost note 

 and significance, an architectural idyll in which is 

 voiced all that they can desire of fitness and perfection, 

 which proclaims to the world at large, as it defiles 

 past on its mail-cars, that some one of their cabin 

 roofs shelters the intellect and prosperity capable of 

 such an achievement. 



It is not a long time since the village and the 



14 



