like the steady-habited poultry of other times, as the people of the house
are like the former inmates, long since dead or gone West. I offer the
poor place a sentiment of regret as I pass, thinking of its better days. I
think of its decorous, hard-working, cleanly, school-going, church-
attending life, which was full of the pleasure of duty done, and was not
without its own quaint beauty and grace. What long Sabbaths were kept in
that old house, what scanty holidays! Yet from this and such as this came
the dominion of the whole wild continent, the freedom of a race, the
greatness of the greatest people. It may be that I regretted a little too
exultantly, and that out of this particular house came only peddling of
innumerable clocks and multitudinous tin-ware. But as yet, it is pretty
certain that the general character of the population has not gained by the
change. What is in the future, let the prophets say; any one can see that
something not quite agreeable is in the present; something that takes the
wrong side, as by instinct, in politics; something that mainly helps to
prop up tottering priestcraft among us; something that one thinks of with
dismay as destined to control so largely the civil and religious interests
of the country. This, however, is only the aggregate aspect. Mrs.
Clannahan's kitchen, as it may be seen by the desperate philosopher when
he goes to engage her for the spring house-cleaning, is a strong argument
against his fears. If Mrs. Clannahan, lately of an Irish cabin, can show a
kitchen so capably appointed and so neatly kept as that, the country may
yet be an inch or two from the brink of ruin, and the race which we trust
as little as we love may turn out no more spendthrift than most heirs. It
is encouraging, moreover, when any people can flatter themselves upon a
superior prosperity and virtue, and we may take heart from the fact that
the French Canadians, many of whom have lodgings in Dublin, are not well
seen by the higher classes of the citizens there. Mrs. Clannahan, whose
house stands over against the main gate of the grave-yard, and who may,
therefore, be considered as moving in the best Dublin society, hints, that