me coming straight from Scotland, where a really grand education has
been the national birthright for generations.

I began to farm about sixty acres near Dingle, and gave my entire time
to it, an assiduity I have compared in my mind to that of the Norwegian
reclaiming the little arable spots on the mountain. We both worked
pretty hard for very scanty results. I did not even live on my tiny
property, but with my mother--my father had died after I returned from
my English schools and before I went to Kelso.

Still matters were not long satisfactory, owing to the failure of the
potato crop in 1845, when the mortality became fearful in consequence.

So at the very end of the year I migrated from Kerry to become an
assistant land agent in Cork, and thus really embarked on the profession
of my life--one which, on the whole, I have most thoroughly and heartily
enjoyed.

I hoped then that I had not done with my beloved Kerry, and my
association with that great kingdom has indeed been lifelong. I have
always understood the feeling of the Irish emigrants who have had sods
of their native earth sent out to them to the New World. _Heimweh_ is
after all a good thing, and Kerry to me would always seem to be
appealing, however far I had roamed.




CHAPTER V