"What has become of the road?" I asked my jarvey.
"Oh! they just take up the rails when they like, the people do."
"Is it what they do with them? Oh; they make fences of them for the beasts."
He was a dry, shrewd old fellow, not very amiably disposed, I was sorry to find, towards my own country.
"Ah! it's America, sorr, that's been the ruin of us entirely."
"It's the storms they send; and then the grain; and now they tell me it's the American beasts that's spoiling the market altogether for Ireland."
"The member of Parliament for your district, I mean. What is his name?"
"His name? Well, I'm not sure; and I don't know that I know the man at all. But I believe his name is Mulloy."
"Oh no, not at all. I don't know at all where he lives, but I believe it's in Tullamore. But what would he know about America? Sure, any one can see it's the storms and the grain that is the death of us in Ireland."
"But I thought it was the landlords and the rents?"
"Oh, that's in Woodford and Loughrea; not here at all. There'll be no good till we get a war."
"Get a war? with whom? What do you want a war for?"
"Ah! it was the good time when we had the Crimean war--with the wheat all about Portumna. I'll show you the great store there was built. It's no use now. But we'll have a war. My son, he's a soldier now. He went out to America. But he didn't like it."
"Oh, he didn't like it. He could get no work, but to be a porter, and it was too hard. So he came back in three months' time, and then he 'listed for a soldier. He's over in England now. He likes it very well. He's getting very good pay. They pay the soldiers well. There's a troop of Hussars here now. They bring a power of money to the place."
"What do they do with the wheat lands now?"
"Oh, they're for sheep; they do very well. Were you ever in Australia, sorr?" pointing to a place we were passing. "There was a man came here from Australia with a pot of money, and he bought that place; but he thought he was a bigger man than he was, and now he's found himself out. I think he would have done as well to stay in Australia where he was."
In quite a different vein he spoke of the landlord of another large seat, and of the way in which the people, some of them, had misbehaved--breaking open the graves of the family on the place, "and tossing the coffins and the bones about, and all for what?"