C.C. Andrews - "Minnesota and Dacotah"

Charles Darwin - "Insectivorous Plants"

Pierre Loti - "Madame Chrysantheme, v4"

Samuel Butler - "Luck or Cunning?"

New Philadelphia Book Publisher Highlights Local Talent
Book and Publishing News from Publishers Newswire(tm)

Looking for Child to be on Cover of a New Book, 'The Model Child'
PHILADELPHIA, Pa. -- The Philadelphia literary world will celebrate the launch of two new players today, April 10th: Kay Square Press, a new publishing company focused on Philadelphia-area artists, their stories, and their art; and Kay Square's first release, 'With the Rich and Mighty: Emlen Etting of Philadelphia' (ISBN: 978-0-9815129-0-7), a critical biography by Kenneth C. Kaleta.

FlatSigned Press Alleges Don Imus Remarks Damage Legacy of President Gerald R. Ford
NEW YORK, N.Y. -- Nathan Yungerberg, an accomplished model scout and professional child photographer is launching a nation-wide casting call to find the cover model for his highly anticipated book release, 'The Model Child: A Parents Guide to the Child Modeling Industry' (ISBN: 978-0-9817018-0-6).

Books: The Letters of Norah on her Tour Through Ireland

M >> Margaret Dixon McDougall >> The Letters of Norah on her Tour Through Ireland




Arrived at the Sound, you find a nice-looking hotel for such a remote
place. There is any amount of liquor to be got: you can also get the
never-varying chop or steak served up with another variety of miserable
cooking, but you cannot get a bit of fish any more than if the sea were
five hundred miles off instead of lapping on the rocks less than a perch
away. Was pulled across the Sound by two young girls, who handled the
big oars as if they were used to them, and urged the boat with its load
of men across the green waters very swiftly with their strong white
arms. As we neared the island of Achill trees were conspicuous by their
absence, and purple heather was plentiful.

Achill island is a treeless place. There are mountains beyond mountains
lying against the sky, heather clad or mossgrown; there are small lakes
lying at the foot of mountains or between mountains; there are dreary
expanses of bog stretching for miles on each side of the road between us
and the mountains, and rising out of the bog are wee bits of fields and
most horrible habitations. We passed the plantation, noticeable because
there is not another, that Mr. Pike has coaled to flourish round his
fine house. There are dark green firs, feathery light green larches,
birches, and other trees that dress in green only when summer comes;
great clumps of laurel and rhododendron, the latter one mass of blossoms
that almost hide the leaves beneath their rosy purple. Mr. Pike has
already made for himself a delicious looking home amid this barren
waste. It enriched our eyes to look at it.

Mr. Pike and Mr. Stoney, of the castellated new building down at the
edge of Clew Bay, have the distinction of being the most unpopular
landlords in this part of the country. After we passed Mr. Pike's place
there were no more trees. The houses are very bad indeed; the cattle in
the pasture are of the small native breed, and have little appearance of
milk; the sheep are very miserable and scraggy. I have often heard of
Cook's recipes saying, "Take the scrag end of a piece of mutton." These
recipes must have emanated from Achill Island, where the mutton must be
pretty much all scrag.

After we drove a long way--what appeared a long way--I do not believe
they measure all the crooks and turns this most serpentine of roads into
the miles--we passed establishment of lay brothers called the Monastery.
There is quite a block of white buildings, and a good many reclaimed
fields, green with the young crops, lie in the valley below them. There
is a bell in a cupola that will call to work and worship, and a chapel
where they meet to pray. The valley where their fields lie stretches to
the sea, and in the bay lay a smack of some kind by which they trade to
Westport. They labor with their own hands, so have not the name of
employing any laborers, but have the name of dispensing charity. I
should have liked to see the buildings and the brethren, but did not
make the attempt.

At length we came to Dugart, the Missionary settlement. A little row of
white-washed houses on one side of a street that ran up hill, another
row of whitewashed houses that ran along the brow of the hill at a right
angle. Slieve Mor behind towering up between the village and the sea;
below the hill at the foot of another mountain is the rectory, beside it
the church, both having a trimming of young trees; some good fields, the
best I have seen in Achill, and a pretty garden lie round both rectory
and church. This is the mission village of Dugart.

At the corner where the two rows of whitewashed houses meet is the Post
Office. As we drove up there was a gentleman with a northern kindliness
in his face, a long brown beard, an unmistakable air of authority, whom
we found out was the rector of Achill. After introduction and some
conversation, he kindly invited me to the rectory after I had brushed
off some of the dust of travel.

The Dugart hotel possesses a large collection of stuffed sea birds, the
proprietor having taste and skill in that direction, and I was enabled
to take a nearer view of specimens of the birds that sail and scream
round the Achill mountains, eagles and gulls, puffins and cormorants,
than I would otherwise have done. After a little rest and refreshment I
walked down the hill to the lonely, lovely rectory in the valley below.

There is a solidity about a stone house, stone porch and stone wall in
every part of Ireland; a strength that makes one think how easily a
house could be turned into a fortalice at a short notice.

I confess I liked this rector, so tall and stately, with his long beard,
grave, kindly face, northern speech, penetrating look, with a certain
air of authority as became a pastor in charge. When he asked me
pleasantly if I had come as a friend, I thought at once of the Bethlehem
elders to Samuel, "Comest thou peaceably?" I think I almost envied this
man his position, the power which he holds as a leader to be a patriot
worker for the good of his countrymen and countrywomen on the barren
isle of Achill.

We walked upon the shady path that leads from rectory to church, under
green arches of leafage, in the real dim religious light which grand
cathedrals only imitate. There is a nice useful garden on one side of
the path, stocked with things good for food and pleasant to the eye.
Along one side is a hedge eight feet high of fuschia growing thus in the
open air, proving that it is possible to turn sheltered spots of barren
Achill into nooks suggestive of Eden.

The little church to which this romantic path brought us was such a
church as one might snuggle down in to learn the way to Zion, and enjoy
the comfort of the old, old story. This mission was begun by the Rev.
Edward Naugh, I believe, in the famine time. It invaded the island with
bread and the Bible. I hear that it has done much good, chiefly, I
believe, in educating and emigrating the people.

The village of the mission opposite the rectory has two schools, an inn
or hotel, a co-operative store, a post-office, some dwellings of
coastguard's men and other official and semi-official people, the agent
over the mission property for one. A little further away on the sea
sands is a miserable collection of cabins inhabited by the people. There
were some poor-looking farmhouses dotting the mountain side.

As far as I could learn there was no industry on Achill Island but
tilling their miserable crofts. The fishing was monopolized by one man,
a Mr. Hector, a Scotchman. The people as far as I could learn had no
boats fitted for deep sea fishing and the coast fishing was monopolized.
They are said to be lazy, unthrifty, unenergetic. I enquired a little
about this and it seemed to me as if there was a door locked and barred
between them and any field for the display of energy with hope--without
an atmosphere of hope, energy is a plant that will not thrive. It is
hope, and nothing but hope, that nerves the backwoods settler of Canada
to do battle with summer heat and winter snow, with the inexorable logic
of circumstances, and he conquers because he has hope. Over every
peasant holding in Ireland of the western part there is written, "Here
is no hope." The superior mind looks upon the peasantry as minors who
are not able to judge for themselves, who need to be tied down with
office rules, and held in by proprietory bit and bridle. They admit,
that they do well in the free air of Canada, but they contend that
thrift, forethought, frugality is produced in them by desperation. I see
desperation all round here producing a recklessness and despair. I know
that hope is the star that shines for the backwoods Canadian to light
him to competence.

I did not see any of the mission tenants in Achill. I saw nothing but
what lay on the surface. I have no doubt that the mission has done good
in many ways, great good. I am sorry, however, that they lost the
opportunity of testing the capabilities of the islanders to flourish as
peasant proprietors; it is not always well for the church to have
vineyards and oliveyards, manservants and maidservants. It is well
sometimes for the church to come down like her Master and to be
alongside of the discouraged mortal who has toiled through a lifetime
and caught nothing but hunger and rags, to share with them the toil and
want.




XL.

REMEMBRANCES OF THE GREAT FAMINE--THE "PLANTED" SCOTCH FARMERS--A
BEAUTIFUL EDIFICE.


On my return from Achill Island I decided that I would not take another
post car drive to Ballycroy, and returned to Mulraney again along the
same road in the shadow of the mountains. On to Newport we drove, back
over the road winding along the side of Clew Bay, and across the head of
the bay through the lonely country leading back to Westport.

The driver, a weather-beaten man in a weather-worn drab coat,
entertained me with tales of the clearances made in the famine time that
left the country side so empty. It is hard to believe that ever human
beings were so cruel to other human beings in this Christian land, and
that it passed unknown, or comparatively unknown, to the rest of the
world.

This man told, with a certain grim satisfaction, of what he called God's
judgments which had fallen on "exterminators." The common people of the
West have a firm belief that God is on their side, no matter what
trouble he allows to come over them. "Sure I do feel my heart afire,
when gintlemen sit on my car driving through this loneliness an' talk of
over-population. Over-population! and the country empty!" I wish I could
remember all this old man said, but I can only recall snatches here and
there.

It is most amazing to think that, when the world at large was sending
help to save the Irish people alive in the awful visitation, so many
were throwing their tenants out on the road to die. And these people had
by hard toil won a living here and paid rent. Every rood of this land,
every cabin had helped to swell princely revenues, until the finger of
God came down in famine, and then, when the revenue stopped, there was
no pity, and it seemed to these poor people that there was no one that
regarded them. I do not wish to ever come to that time of life when I
can hear of the scenes that wasted this country without feeling a
passion of sorrow and regret.

I spoke of these things to a worthy gentleman resident in another part
of the country and he brushed it aside as if it were a fly, saying, "Oh,
that is long past, thirty years and more." Memory is very strong among
people who seem to have little to look forward to--the past seems the
principal outlook. Every incident of the French landing here so far back
as '98 is told to me in the West here with a freshness of detail as if
it happened a few years ago; one can imagine, therefore, how the cruel
evictions of the famine time fit themselves into the memory of the
people, especially as the rush of fresh evictions are awaking all the
horrors of the past.

It seemed a gloomy satisfaction to this man to tell over what he
considered God's judgments which had fallen on exterminators. He pointed
out to me many who seemed doomed to be the last of their race.

At last we passed the long, dead wall which encloses the magnificent
demesne of the Marquis of Sligo and drew up at Westport once more. The
local papers which await me are full of Miss Gardner and her war with
her tenants--more evictions, emergency men from Dublin to hold
possession--and all the rest. I was introduced by a Protestant clergyman
to a gentleman connected with the executive of the law for a quarter of
a century. He knows the heartrending inner history of legal eviction.
This gentleman has a wonderful tenderness in his heart for Miss Gardner.
"Sure she grew up among us. The other one (Miss Pringle) found her as
kindly a woman as was on God's earth and has made an ogre of her."

I will give an extract or two out of the softest part of the statement
he has drawn up for me.

He tells of a landlord who evicted whole townlands in 1847. He hated the
people because the famine swept over them. He became possessed with the
same ideas as other landlords of the period, whose income had diminished
through the visitation of God, that if the present possessors were
rooted out and depopulated lands planted with Scotchmen, their skill and
capital would prevent a recurrence of famine.

Now it is a fact freely attested to me by clergymen of different
denominations that the planted people of Mayo required help, and help to
a very large amount to keep them from starvation during the last
scarcity. On many estates in Mayo and the adjoining parts of Sligo the
Protestant population would have died of hunger but for the large help
given both denominationally, and otherwise. They could not have seeded
their grounds but for seed freely given them. Fields in Mayo this season
are lying bare because the wretched people are not able to get seed to
put in the ground. Some of the planted people complained to me that
though when they settled on their present lands they got them cheap, two
shillings and sixpence an acre for wild land, yet as they improved their
land the rent was raised to five, to seven and six, to fourteen, and now
to over a pound an acre. These men also complained that they could not
possibly exist at all during these last seasons and pay the rent which
was laid on them in consequence of the improvements done by their own
labor. I find by the most conclusive proof that a difference of
religious belief did not enable the settlers any more than the natives
to pay a rent that could not be produced from the soil. The desire to
change the nationality and religion of his tenants was so strong in one
landlord that, in the words of my informant, "A scene of ruthless havoc
began among his tenantry. To stimulate the slowness of the crowbar
brigade he was known to tear down human habitations with his own hands."
I remember these poor people standing in the market in those dark days
of famine, having their bits of furniture for sale on the streets, and
there were none to buy. I have heard the wailing of men, women and
children on the coach-top day after day, when these fortunate
unfortunates were escaping from their native land forever. I saw those
who could not go in the agonies of death in the fever sheds. These
scenes happened over thirty years ago, but they will never be forgotten.
Four large townlands, on which eighty homes had been, became a
wilderness of grass and rank weeds. No Scotch were forthcoming for the
wrecked farms. There was a Nemesis in store for him. His day of eviction
came about, and in his trouble his tenants saw retribution. As charity
kept some of his tenants alive, so he also was indebted to the charity
of friends, and passed away to meet his tenants at a bar where high
blood or aristocratic connections do not sway the Judge who sits on the
throne of justice, nor does party prejudice blind his eyes.

When Miss Gardner came of age it took all the property of her father to
pay the money secured to her by her mother's settlement, and she entered
into possession in his stead. Like Queen Elizabeth, whom Miss Gardner
greatly resembles, she had in her youth known troubles; sympathy for
these trials, so well known to the peasantry, made them receive her with
open arms and open hearts. In the interval between Miss Gardner entering
into possession and her coming under the influence of Miss Pringle she
set herself to repair the havoc made by her predecessor, and was the
idol of her tenantry. She was near neighbor to the model farm and
orphanage presided over by the Scotch ladies. Philanthropy collected the
vast sums which bought and stocked the model farm at Ballinglen. When
their mode of managing matters there could be no longer hidden from the
Presbyterian Church which they misrepresented, the mission came out
largely indebted to these ladies. It took all the stock to pay off its
indebtedness to one lady, and the farm itself to pay the other. It is
the lady who got the farm as her share, that lives with Miss Gardner,
and gets the credit of her every unpopular act. She has divided between
her and her only friend in the dark days. This Scotch hag found her a
kind-hearted woman, and has made her into an ogre. Some of this
communication, the hardest of it, I shall reserve, also several
confirmatory anecdotes given me at Westport.

In mercy to the readers, I will only say that Miss Gardner has intense
courage and an intellect of masculine strength, and resembles Queen
Elizabeth in more ways than one. It is a great pity that she has not
Queen Bess's popularity or her care for her people.

Westport, when I have time to look at it, is a very pretty town. Its
buildings, its hotels and the warehouses on the quay look as if it once
had an extensive and flourishing trade, or was prepared for and
expecting it. There was, I am told, once a flourishing linen trade here,
but it has gone to decay. The town is in a little hollow, with pleasant
tree-crowned green hills rising all round it; at one side is the demesne
of the Marquis of Sligo, which is open to the public. These grounds
extend for miles, and are as beautiful as gorgeous trees, green grass,
dark woods, waters that leap and flash, spanned by rustic bridges, can
make them. There are winding walks leading through the green fields,
under trees, into woods, up hill and down, into shady glens, where you
might wander for miles and lose yourself in green-wood solitudes. Crowds
of Westport folk, in the calm evening, saunter through the grounds and
enjoy their beauty.

The little town has a subdued expression of prosperity. You feel
conscious that some business is going on that enables the inhabitants of
the town to live comfortably and to dress respectably. You hear of the
mills of the Messrs. Livingstone, of their business in trading and land-
owning, until you are convinced that they are the centre round which
this little world revolves.

I had a lady pointed out to me here as being in such embarrassed
circumstances, owing to the non-payment of rent, that her son was
obliged to join the police force to earn a living. I heard also great
sympathy expressed for another gentleman in Dublin who has many sons,
whom he has brought up to do nothing, and who has been reduced by the
strike against rent to absolute poverty. I am told that banks in Dublin
are glutted with family silver left as security for loans. These people
are to be pitied, for poverty is poverty in purple or in rags; but when
poverty comes to actual want, it is still more pitiful.




XLI.

GOING TO ENGLAND FOR WORK--CANADA AND AMERICA.


I have been going against the stream on my travels. I am reminded,
incessantly that I should have begun at Dublin. Going backward, as I am
doing, the orthodox route is to Leenane, passing Erriff and the Devil's
Mother, but the regular cars were not yet running, I was told, nor were
they likely to run this summer, as, owing to the exaggerated reports of
outrage, tourists are not expected in any numbers. Was persuaded to take
a special car to go by Leenane round the coast. Would have liked to do
so, but not to bear all the expense myself. The further west the more
expensive the car, I find. Instead, I returned to Castlebar, and on to
Balla. Balla is the small town where the Land League was born.

In the compartment to which I was consigned there were some gentlemen,
for gentlemen and ladies of very great apparent respectability do travel
in the cars devoted to the humbler people; there were also some
respectable looking laborers who were going over to England to look for
work. A discussion arose in our compartment as to what constituted
politeness. One gentleman defined it as ceremonious manners, the result
of early training; while another objected that that was only the veneer
of manners, as all true politeness arose from the heart. I listened
awhile and then spoke across the seat to a decent, dejected looking man
with a little bundle beside him tied up in a blue and white check
handkerchief. "Yes, he was going to England to look for work; many had
to go for the work was not to be had at home." "The rents were so high,
and the taxes, what with one thing and another, there was a new cut
always coming heavier than the last." "The people are being crushed out
of the country very fast, and that was God's truth." "And you are from
America? It is a fine country they say. I would be there long ago but
for the heavy care I have here that I can neither take with me nor leave
behind." "Yes, I go over to England every year. For a good many years
past I have always worked for the same man, ever since I went there
first." "It grows harder to live in Ireland every year."

I told this man amid the craned necks and open mouths of his companions,
some of the advantages of Canada as a home. I do not know why it is that
the people know so little of Canada. I was listened to with exclamations
of "Well, well!" "Boys a boys!" "Dear O dear!" "Hear that, now! A man
might live there!"

Getting at last across the Mayo plains to Claremorris, I parted from my
acquaintances with many a "God bless you," while many hands lifted out
my travelling bags. At Claremorris a car man asked if I was a pilgrim
for Knock which was the first intimation that I had that I was in the
vicinity of Knock. Hired this car man, who was also owner of the car, to
drive me there. I have always heard that those born on Christmas Day are
privileged to see apparitions. I have not yet come into that part of my
inheritance, but do not know how soon I may.

On the way, which led through a well-cultivated, fertile country, waving
with trees, and showing glimpses of great houses peeping out among them,
the driver asked me if I had ever heard of Captain Boycott. I said there
were few who had not. "He used to live in that house up there; he was
agent in this part of the country, but he left us, thank God." "What
made people dislike him so?" "Because he was the height of a great
tyrant." "Come now, what did he do?" "Everything he could do to oppress
the creatures who were in his power. I have known a man come home to his
little family with three shillings for his week's wages, all the rest
scratched off him in fines. If you have a family yourself you will
understand what their living would be when they paid the rent of the
cabin. A man dazed with hunger would not have all his wits about him and
there would be more fines. In that way the mane hound got his work done
for half price, and ground the life out of the people. There was no word
of an emergency man to pity or help them. God help us; how true it is
that the help does not go where the want is."

We got to Knock, a country church in a country place. Alighted, and
while the carman tied his horse I looked round me. There was an
enclosure round the chapel. At one side was a row of wooden booths,
where relics, beads and trinkets were sold. On the other side of the
enclosure was a school for girls. It was at the end of the church where
the apparition is said to have appeared that we entered. All the plaster
on this end was removed by devotees. In the spot where the apparition
was said to have been seen, there was a life-size statue of the Virgin
in plaster. All over the gable were strips of wood cleated on, behind
which were ranged walking-sticks and crutches in regular order till the
whole gable was covered. There was a long frame-work of wood about
twelve feet long and three broad, also filled with crutches and walking-
sticks.

As I stood looking, the car man came in after tying his horse, and knelt
down on the damp earth before the Virgin's shrine and repeated a prayer.
He was not ashamed to practice what he believed before the world and in
the sight of the sun. When his prayer was over he joined me, and drew my
attention to the number of crutches and sticks left behind by those who
were benefited. I pointed out to him a very handsome black-thorn stick
among the votive offerings, and asked him would it be a sin to steal it,
as black-thorns were in demand over the water. He told me if I did that
whatever disease was laid down there by the owner of the stick would
cleave to me. I thought of Gehazi and restrained my hands from stealing
the black-thorn. There is one nice characteristic of a genuine Irishman,
he can take a joke.

There were many masons working at an enlargement of the church. We went
in. It had an earthen floor, and there were many people kneeling on it
at their prayers. Some were silently making the stations of the cross,
others, a large number, were reciting the rosary aloud under the
leadership of a young woman, who repeated one part, when they all
answered in concert. The windows were darkened by the scaffolding and
building outside, and as I sat there seeing and hearing, looking toward
the altar, in the shadow of a pillar I saw a hand steal out. I own I was
startled; but when my eyes got accustomed to the gloom, I saw it was a
man at the top of a ladder quietly painting away as if the church were
empty.