220 



AN OCTOBER ABROAD. 



of this simple and social people, with whom I at once 

 felt that " touch of nature " which" makes all the world 

 kin," and my leave-taking was warm and hearty ac- 

 cordingly. 



Through the wind and the darkness I threaded my 

 way to the wharf, and in less than two hours afterward 

 was a most penitent voyager, and fitfully joining in that 

 doleful gastriloqual chorus that so often goes up from 

 the cabins of those channel steamers. 



I hardly know why I went to Ireland, except it was 

 to indulge the few drops of Irish blood in my veins, 

 and may be also with a view to shorten my sea voyage 

 by a day. I also felt a desire to see one or two literary 

 men there, and in this sense my journey was eminently 

 gratifying ; butso far from shortening my voyage by 

 a day, it lengthened it by three days, that being the 

 time it took me to recover from the effects of it ; and 

 as to the tie of blood, I think it must nearly all have 

 run out, for I felt but few congenital throbs while in 

 Ireland. 



The Englishman at home is a much more lovable 

 animal than the Englishman abroad, but Pat in Ireland 

 is even more of a pig than in this country. Indeed, 

 the squalor and poverty, and cold, skinny wretchedness 

 one sees in Ireland, and (what freezes our sympathies) 

 the groveling, swiny shiftlessness that pervades these 

 hovels, no traveller can be prepared for. It is the bare 

 prose of misery, the unheroic of tragedy. There is not 

 one redeeming or mitigating feature. 



