to-day.

It is perfectly true that there are many Irish landlords in sporting
counties who cannot have three hundred a year, and yet all their sons
and daughters manage to hunt four days a week.

This would be impossible out of Ireland, and is absolutely
incomprehensible even there; but the fact remains that it is done, and
all one can remark is to echo the patter of the conjuror:--

'Wonderful, isn't it?'

I, however, was not destined to be left a derelict at home, as falls to
the hapless lot of far too many good fellows in Ireland.

There were a good many family counsels, and the authorities could not
make up their minds what to do with me. However, I thought farming was
the idlest occupation, and suggested it should be my profession--an idea
hailed with rapture, principally because it saved everybody the trouble
of racking their brains about me.

Personally, I have often regretted that what in modern phrase may be
called the 'Stevenson boom' did not coincide with my search for a
career. Big posts were in due time going for engineers; and those young
men who had the stamp of apprenticeship to, or association with, the
great man could get almost anything in the days of the fever for railway
construction.

Even later than the period I am now recalling, the journey from Dublin
to Dingle would take more than two days, and, so far as I can recollect,