i
 
 THE BECKONING OF THE WAND
 
 THE BECKONING OF 
 THE WAND 
 
 SKETCHES OF A LESSER KNOWN IRELAND 
 BY ALICE DBASE 
 
 A piteous land, 
 
 Yet ever beckoning with enchanted wand." 
 
 R. J. ALEXANDER. 
 
 St. Louis, Mo. 
 
 B. HERDEE, 17 SOUTH BROADWAY 
 LONDON & EDINBURGH 
 SANDS A COMPANY 
 
 1908
 
 THE BECKONING OF THE WAND 
 
 MY DEAR JOAN, You ask me to pity you 
 for having to live in Ireland. You send me a 
 little brown-covered book called " Letters from 
 Ireland," and you say, " I have been in this 
 country for two years, and have seen with my 
 own eyes much and far more than I wish 
 of what is described in this book with such 
 photographic distinctness. Although the author 
 is an Irishman he abuses his country as it 
 deserves, but then his eyes have been opened 
 by living in America, and he, at least, has the 
 
 2129180
 
 2 THE BECKONING OF THE WAND 
 
 courage of his convictions. You cannot deny 
 that his pictures of idleness, apathy, and dirt 
 are drawn from the life, then pity me for having 
 to live among such people." 
 
 Now I am going to surprise you. I am going 
 to be perfectly frank with you, and, as I do not 
 feel that the cap fits me, I am going to ignore 
 your insinuation that the writer of " Letters 
 from Ireland " is unique in having the courage 
 of his convictions, and I am going to pity you 
 for having to live in Ireland ! 
 
 My dear, I do pity you from my heart for 
 having lived for two years in a country where, 
 in spite of evils I do not attempt to deny, 
 there is so much, so very much, that is good 
 and beautiful, yes, and deeply spiritual, to see 
 and not to have seen it. 
 
 You have read with evident attention the 
 pages of the little book that you send me to- 
 day, but, Joan dear, do you not think that a 
 portrait is a truer likeness than a photograph, and
 
 would you not rather have a full instead of a 
 one-sided representation of anything, even of a 
 nation that you do not love ? You already have 
 the photograph. All the evils which are only 
 too painfully apparent, and blot the surface of 
 Irish life, are faithfully portrayed in these so- 
 called American letters. My portrait may be 
 ill- drawn, the descriptive strokes may be feeble 
 and blurred ; yet if I can express anything of 
 what I feel, what I know to be true, you will 
 have to own that there is a something in the 
 Irish character which makes them a people apart 
 from and, in their innate spirituality, above all 
 others. 
 
 " Letters from Ireland," which, by the way, 
 was obviously never penned by a man, is a 
 most useful and alas ! that I must own it a 
 truthful little book. The copies of it that fall 
 into the hands for which it is intended cannot 
 fail to do a part at least of the good that its 
 authoress, a practical lover of her country, wishes.
 
 4 THE BECKONING OF THE WAND 
 
 But when her readers fail to grasp that she is 
 writing solely from a materialistic point of view, 
 and that abuse of her own country for which 
 she is doing good work with tongue and pen 
 is not intended, then her little book needs some 
 amplification. 
 
 That the state of things she describes and 
 deplores, that she is working to improve, is the 
 outcome of past oppressive laws, cannot be 
 denied, but this is no excuse for the continu- 
 ance of a state of things which, as she says, 
 is a disgrace to a race entitled on other 
 grounds to so high a position in the grades 
 of nations. All lovers of Ireland should there- 
 fore welcome a book which will help to improve 
 the material well-being of Ireland, no matter 
 how humiliating it may be to our national 
 pride. 
 
 It is a well known and a very true saying 
 that Saxon and Celt might come to the under-
 
 THE BECKONING OF THE WAND 5 
 
 standing they have so long sought and always 
 missed 
 
 " If England would remember, 
 And Ireland could forget." 
 
 England at last is remembering. In her Saxon 
 fashion she is doing all she can to atone for 
 the faults of the past, and Ireland must forget. 
 We can only hope that with increasing educational 
 and material advantages she will soon arrive at 
 this desired point of forgetfulness. Otherwise 
 the blame for our shortcomings, which for so 
 many generations we have comfortably saddled 
 upon England, will have to be taken on our 
 own shoulders, and we shall have, in common 
 honesty, to remain silent when such accusations 
 as yours are levelled at us. 
 
 Even now we cannot deny our faults, but 
 still there remains another and a higher side of 
 Irish nature which must not be ignored, if, even 
 without being merciful, we wish to be just, to
 
 6 THE BECKONING OF THE WAND 
 
 our own. I am an Irishwoman. I will admit, if 
 you like, that I am consequently idle, apathetic, 
 and dirty, but I do claim some redeeming points. 
 So it is with us all, and the consciousness of 
 these redeeming points, hidden though they often 
 are, should help us to bear with our national 
 failings, and nerve us to greater efforts in the 
 cause of rational regeneration as championed in 
 " Letters from Ireland." 
 
 The time for silence has not yet come, so 
 bear with my garrulity, and read how personal 
 experience has taught me to look on Ireland, 
 her virtues, and her failings. The facts that 1 
 shall set down must speak for themselves, and 
 the vaunted justice of the English nation will 
 be belied, if, when you have read, you cannot 
 spare some little admiration for the country that, 
 from a thorough knowledge of it, I have learned 
 to love so dearly. To love one's country, seeing 
 nothing beyond the American photograph, would 
 be impossible though pity is supposed to be
 
 THE BECKONING OF THE WAND 7 
 
 akin to love but it is quite possible to see its 
 faults and yet to love it for the sake of the 
 high and really beautiful qualities that some of 
 the individual owners of these faults possess. 
 Scripture tells us that " A little leaven leaveneth 
 the lump." As you have to live in Ireland, 
 Joan, may I help you to see that leaven ? 
 
 Do you remember when you first went to 
 Ballynaraggit, I asked you to go and see old 
 Paddy Farrell, who lived on the Doones ? The 
 description that you gave me of your visit was 
 something like this : 
 
 ' I have been to see your old man, but I 
 do wish, my dear Patricia, that your proteges 
 lived in more accessible places. The so-called 
 road was ankle deep in mud, and what the 
 mayor and corporation, or whatever your local 
 authorities call themselves, are about, 1 can't 
 imagine. Then there are no gates or even 
 stiles, and the horrid untidy bushes in the gate- 
 ways scratched my legs and tore my clothes.
 
 8 THE BECKONING OF THE WAND 
 
 As for the old man's house when I did get to 
 it, I can only say that I would not shut my 
 eyes all night if I thought Toodles or Wowsey 
 (I forget which was the canine treasure just 
 then) had to sleep in such a place, and yet 
 when I told the old man that he ought to go 
 to the workhouse he was almost rude. As 
 for his clothes, they were absolutely too too . 
 Really, darling, I can't imagine how you can 
 even pretend to like such creatures." 
 
 Now, Joan, I am going to tell you some- 
 thing more about Paddy, and to begin with, let 
 me describe one of my visits to him. 
 
 The road to Doone is almost always' muddy, 
 but there are stretches of grass on either side of 
 it which enable a rider to canter even before 
 leaving the highway. Beyond this point no 
 tiresome gates or stiles get in one's way. The 
 gaps are stuffed with a couple of bushes that 
 just make a nice little hop for the pony. The 
 last fence has no gap, but it is only a tiny
 
 THE BECKONING OF THE WAND 9 
 
 ditch and bank, and the clatter of stones on 
 the landing-side brought Paddy out to welcome 
 me. 
 
 " God's blessin' be about you, and you on a 
 peaceable baste for the onct. When I see the 
 big red divil (my poor chestnut !) under y'r 
 honor, me heart gets shifted, an' I'm like to 
 die." 
 
 Paddy had had trouble lately. His precious 
 spectacles "got broke on him 'twill be two weeks 
 come Sunday, and ne'er a stim good bad or 
 indifferent can he see." 
 
 I had a pair of glasses for him in my pocket, 
 and these he hastily and gratefully put on. 
 
 " Grand then, grand entirely," he murmured, 
 and out of a rag - covered recess in his coat he 
 produced a well-thumbed, a most unclean copy 
 of the penny prayer-book. "A prayer before 
 mass give us O Almighty and eternal 
 
 He read aloud in a monotonous sing-song 
 voice, ending up with "grand, grand entirely."
 
 10 THE BECKONING OF THE WAND 
 
 Then looking up at me, an expression of blank 
 amazement overspread his countenance. " Glory 
 be to God, y'r honor," he ejaculated, " I never 
 knew you had so big a face on you before." 
 
 Even when the glasses with their marvellous 
 magnifying powers had been laid aside, he could 
 scarcely be reassured as to the normal proportion 
 of my features, and to distract his attention I 
 began to enquire after his health. 
 
 " Tis grand I am, thanks be to God," he said. 
 "I'd be as soople as them boys in the hurley field 
 of a Sunday, an' me eighty-one years of age, if 
 it wasn't for the pains that ketches me in the 
 back, and has me destroyed." 
 
 I offered him some red flannel, usually an 
 eagerly accepted panacea for all rheumatic affec- 
 tions, but to my astonishment Paddy demurred, 
 hesitated, and finally refused my offer. 
 
 " You wouldn't take a bit of flannel from me, 
 Paddy? Now, why is that? Do you think it 
 would be troubling me, or why?"
 
 THE BECKONING OF THE WAND 11 
 
 " Well, it's the truth I will be tellin' y'r honor 
 an' no lie. I haven't a whit o' aches or sufferin' 
 on me barrin' them pains I do be tellin' you 
 about, and if I lost the only thing that likens 
 me to the Son of God, I'd be fearin' maybe 
 that God Himself had forgotten me." 
 
 Joan, dear, is any pretence needed about 
 loving a saint when one is fortunate enough to 
 know one ? 
 
 I suppose you did not trouble to go up the 
 Doone against the side of which Paddy's miser- 
 able little cabin is built. From above it looks 
 like a heap of dead grass and rushes, but it is 
 his home, his very own, come to him from his 
 father, and from seven generations before that. 
 
 A stretch of bog-land lies at one's feet, brown 
 and yellow. Fading to buff near at hand, it 
 turns to deep brown, deep brilliant brown, merging 
 into purple, which changes to indigo against the 
 blue hills of the horizon. The dark green of a 
 clump of fir-trees tones down the almost too
 
 12 THE BECKONING OF THE WAND 
 
 vivid emerald of the meadows beyond the stream 
 whose waters glisten here and there like diamonds 
 in the bog. At one side there is a chain of 
 lakes. The tall reeds that edge the nearest are 
 distinguishable, waving gracefully, while round 
 the further ones they merely show as a softening 
 fringe. But the lights, the indescribable lights 
 purple, blood -red, golden, silvery - grey, all soft, 
 all beautiful, mingling with one another are the 
 crowning glory of the scene. You did not see 
 all this, Joan, I know, because Dora Sigerson's 
 lines to Ireland are so true : 
 
 " God has made you all fair, 
 You in purple and gold, 
 You in silver and green, 
 Till no eye that has seen 
 Without love can behold." 
 
 No, poor Joan, as yet your "eyes have not 
 seen." 
 
 I expect that at the time of the big storm 
 they told you that Paddy Farrell was found 
 dead, but did they give you any details ? The
 
 THE BECKONING OF THE WAND 13 
 
 facts have reached me here. The local colouring 
 I can picture for myself. 
 
 He had been into the town to get the pittance 
 allowed him as "out-door relief" from the Union. 
 Six coppers were found afterwards in his pocket ; 
 the rest of his weekly income, amounting to 
 another eighteenpence, had been spent in buying 
 a tiny packet of tea, a candle, some sugar and 
 an infinitesimal twist of tobacco. These also 
 were found upon him. Even the tobacco was 
 untouched, though it had evidently been fingered, 
 but, as he possessed no matches, the luxury of a 
 pipe had been denied him. 
 
 Can't you imagine the wind on that night 
 of storm along the road from Ballynaraggit ? 
 Coming unchecked from further than eye could 
 reach, gaining force with every mile of open bog 
 that it traversed, the gale burst upon the solitary 
 eighty-one-year-old traveller who was slowly and 
 painfully making his way to Doone. 
 
 Why did he not stay the night in town when
 
 14 THE BECKONING OF THE WAND 
 
 such a storm was threatening ? Who knows ? 
 Perhaps he felt the shadow of death upon him, 
 and a blind animal instinct may have dragged 
 his unwilling feet, his weary aching body home- 
 ward. Perhaps he foresaw that the home of his 
 seven generations was destined to destruction, 
 and pride of race bade the last of the name to 
 be present at the fall. No one knows where the 
 breaking of the storm came upon him. Not far 
 from home, probably, for he was able to drag 
 himself to the shelter of the high bank that rises 
 up where bog gives way to meadow land, and 
 there, in the bottom of the ditch which winter 
 rains had not yet flooded, Paddy sat down to 
 rest and die. 
 
 What were his thoughts, crouched there with 
 the storm roaring and thundering above him ? 
 Was he troubled with regrets for the priest at 
 whose feet he had knelt in his rags month after 
 month these years past? for the brown habit of 
 Mount Carmel, bought with his scant savings to
 
 
 THE BECKONING OF THE WAND 15 
 
 die in, and now lying useless in the cabin over the 
 fields ? Did the sins of his past life crowd round 
 and overwhelm him ? For he knew that death 
 was at hand. He had no habit to put on ; then the 
 Mother of God must own him by the scapulars 
 that he wore. Painfully, with stiffening fingers, he 
 drew the brown braid from his neck, kissing the 
 badges reverently, and then clasping them closely 
 to him. Round the other hand was turned 
 and twisted his old black rosary, and if there 
 was no light to see, still his lips could feel the 
 well-worn figure of the Saviour, Who, alone also, 
 had suffered the pangs of death for him. Then 
 he closed his eyes, but his treasures, scapulars 
 and rosary, were still kept tightly clasped, and 
 in the morning, when they found him dead 
 they could not, did not seek, to rob him of 
 them. 
 
 Joan, dear, don't you think, when the angels 
 came to take the soul away out of the dark cold 
 ditch, that they thought less of the unwashed face,
 
 16 THE BECKONING OF THE WAND 
 
 the clothes that were really too too , of the 
 coppers taken in dole from the Union, than 
 they did of the prayers that rose to Heaven, of 
 the pains gladly suffered because they likened 
 the sufferer to Christ, of the rosary and the 
 crucifix that claimed the last material thoughts 
 of my friend, Paddy Farrell. Your loving 
 
 PATRICIA.
 
 11 
 
 M DEAR JOAN, You are wrong in thinking that 
 I am trying to refute the allegations brought 
 against the Irish race in those other letters. 
 Alas ! I could not do that because and again 
 alas ! alas ! their truth is borne out by the lives 
 and behaviour of far too many of my countrymen 
 to allow of any wholesale refutation. 
 
 What I want to prove to you is, that in spite 
 of all our faults we still have redeeming points, 
 and that life in Ireland is not necessarily un- 
 endurable. To a philanthropist, pur et simple, 
 work amongst the Irish poor must, I fear, be 
 very despairing, in spite of individually successful 
 cases. There is the quickness to grasp, the 
 ability to perform, even the intelligence to admire 
 
 17 B
 
 18 THE BECKONING OF THE WAND 
 
 better things, yet put these in the balance, and 
 they are utterly outweighed by the faults that 
 you are inclined to exult over, but I and the 
 writer of the American letters deplore. 
 
 As a nation we have many faults (that we 
 have them as individuals goes without saying, for 
 no one supposes we were born without original 
 sin), but in order that you and I may be able to 
 bear with these faults and do our little best to 
 counteract them, let us be willing to see that good 
 qualities exist as well as evil ones. Hidden they 
 may be, but they are still there. To find these 
 good qualities we must look to individuals, not to 
 the nation as a whole, and having found examples 
 of them here and there, we must take them as 
 " a little leaven " to leaven the lump of our 
 national imperfections. 
 
 So it comes back to that with which I started. 
 
 I do not try to meet the accusations of the 
 American letters, much less do I try to refute them. 
 
 I only ask for a little leniency, in spite of
 
 THE BECKONING OF THE WAND 19 
 
 the faults of our many, because of the virtues 
 of our few. 
 
 I wish you could have come with me upon 
 a round of visits I paid one summer day not 
 long ago, for I think even you would have been 
 interested, would have seen some of the attrac- 
 tions that, in spite of needless dirt and poverty, 
 make Ireland 
 
 " A piteous land, 
 
 Yet ever beckoning with enchanted wand." 
 
 A narrow lane leads from a high road 
 through lovely green fields down almost to the 
 edge of the bog. Here in the yard of a 
 "comfortable" farmer the cart track it is little 
 more ceases to exist, and we must continue our 
 journey along a grassy footpath until our feet 
 rest on the crisp, springy heather where only 
 one to the country born can make his way dry 
 shod. The cottage which was our destination 
 differed little in appearance from the neighbouring 
 turf clamps. The door was closed, but a slight
 
 20 THE BECKONING OF THE WAND 
 
 push enabled us to enter, with heads bowed by 
 the remembrance of past knocks from just such 
 sooty rafters. 
 
 The Widow Hanratty is generally on the 
 threshold to greet us, but to-day the kitchen was 
 empty and fireless, and a voice came feebly from 
 the gloom of the inner room. 
 
 " Who is it I have here ? Then praises be 
 to God for sending you, an' me with not a bone 
 in me body but's broke since the nanny - goat 
 threw me in the gripe." 
 
 The " gripe " is a mearing fence, both wide 
 and deep, and the nanny-goat's horns had left 
 severe bruises behind them, besides dislocating 
 the poor old shoulder. Nothing had been done 
 to ease the pain, although a week had passed 
 since the accident happened. 
 
 "The boy (aged sixty) was for telling the 
 ladies the way it was with me," so she recounted, 
 "but then he didn't like for to be troubling. 
 'Tis the good son he is to me, fixing me up
 
 THE BECKONING OF THE WAND 21 
 
 finely and setting the holy water beside me and 
 the cup o' tea too before ever he goes out to 
 work of a morning." 
 
 The tea -cup was now empty and we set to 
 work to fill it again. The fire in the kitchen, 
 however, was out, and no match forthcoming, 
 so, tin can in hand, we retraced our steps to 
 the farm at the lane end, where we were made 
 welcome to a " live " turf, which we carried care- 
 fully back, all glowing, under a layer of ashes. 
 A mug full of bog water did not take long to 
 boil, and soon, with the help of a " grain " of tea 
 and a small bottle of milk, produced from our 
 pockets, it made a cheering cup, which was 
 eagerly drunk by the invalid. 
 
 The "wrapper," which was the widow's chief 
 article of wearing apparel, showed comparatively 
 white against the smoke-grimed, straw-filled sacks 
 and coverlets that formed her bed, but it had got 
 so wound round the uninjured arm that this was 
 as helpless as the other, and it was no easy task
 
 22 THE BECKONING OF THE WAND 
 
 setting it to rights. The slightest movement 
 was pain to her, yet she begged us to dive into 
 dark recesses all about her to find "her one 
 comfort," the rosary beads that had slipped from 
 her fingers. 
 
 A few days later we met the doctor, who 
 at our request had paid a visit to the Widow 
 Hanratty, and with dexterous fingers set the 
 dislocated limb. He spoke with so grave a 
 face that we feared she must have succumbed 
 after all. 
 
 " Indeed you cannot go there again," he said ; 
 " I could not answer for the consequences if you 
 did." 
 
 Visions of the most infectious diseases rose 
 up before us, and we begged for further informa- 
 tion. At first he would say no more, but at 
 length we forced him to speak : 
 
 " The truth is," he hesitated even then, " the 
 truth is that in that house there are myriads 
 and myriads of fleas 1 "
 
 THE BECKONING OF THE WAND 23 
 
 . This was a fact of which we had not been 
 allowed to remain unaware, and one which the 
 nuns, too, were not long in finding out, when, 
 a few days later Mrs Hanratty consented to be 
 carried ten miles off to the workhouse infirmary. 
 
 The next house, also a turf-walled, sod-roofed 
 cabin, was the home of the saddest of all our 
 acquaintances. Biddy Muldoon was alone in the 
 world, and the dread disease that had attacked 
 her face debarred her from a welcome in any of 
 the neighbours' houses, although every one around 
 was willing to help her as best they could. 
 
 She was a pitiable object as she crouched at the 
 door of her hovel, and when the breezes blowing 
 over the bog raised the dirty rags that covered a 
 part of her face, we could not resist drawing our 
 hats over our eyes, anxious not to hurt poor 
 Biddy's feelings, yet unable to gaze on so terrible 
 a sight. But her senses were keener than we 
 thought, and a skinny arm was extended to thrust 
 back the sheltering brims.
 
 24 THE BECKONING OF THE WAND 
 
 ' Is it from the likes o' me you come to 
 learn manners ? " she asked reproachfully. " Have 
 you never been taught to look a body in the 
 face when you speak to them ? " 
 
 But it was not in body alone that Biddy 
 suffered. She was one of the very, very few of 
 the two or three out of six hundred in the 
 parish who had not approached the Sacraments 
 for years. By her own act, poor soul, she 
 deprived herself of what ought to have been her 
 greatest consolation. Repeated pleadings had been 
 fruitless, and at last one day something urged 
 me to speak more plainly than ever before, more 
 plainly than is usually advisable. 
 
 " The truth is, Biddy, that you have been ill so 
 long that you forget how dangerous your illness 
 is. Don't you know that at any moment now 
 a blood vessel may be touched, and then you 
 will bleed to death before the priest can come to 
 you, or before you can even call one of the 
 neighbours to send for him ? "
 
 THE BECKONING OF THE WAND 25 
 
 A half-hearted promise to send for the priest 
 " some time " was all we could extract at the 
 moment, but that night a horse's footfall on the 
 frost-bound road told of a sick call in Biddy's 
 direction, and we hoped and rightly, thank God, 
 as we afterwards learnt that our words had been 
 spoken in time, and had had more effect than 
 we imagined. 
 
 Not many days after, and before we were able 
 to get down to the bog again, a passer-by on 
 that lonely road, seeing no smoke rising from 
 the hole in the cabin roof that did duty for a 
 chimney, forced open the door. He found Biddy 
 lying on the cold hearthstone, alone, stiff, quite 
 dead. 
 
 Mrs Brolly, the r next door neighbour of poor 
 Biddy, was standing at the door of her comfort- 
 able cottage as we passed by, and we stopped, 
 just to "bid her the time of day." She is well 
 to do and comfortable enough, with steady sturdy 
 sons all earning for her. There is only one gap
 
 26 THE BECKONING OF THE WAND 
 
 in the family circle, and this was caused by the 
 death of a boy hi the South African war. " But 
 I can't complain," Mrs Brolly had said to us at 
 the time. " God has been very good when He 
 didn't leave me stript entirely, like Lord Roberts." 
 
 She eyed us with certain disfavour as we 
 stopped to accost her. 
 
 " Where's this your sister is, miss ? " she asked. 
 " It's not me own lady I have to-day at all." 
 
 The absence of her special friend being 
 explained to her, she was seemingly content. 
 
 " Sure isn't she the beautiful lady," she 
 murmured half to herself. " When she comes in 
 here to me, isn't she for all the world like a 
 fallen angel ! " 
 
 Further on was a house that claimed from us 
 that most painful of duties, a visit of condolence. 
 The newly-made widow came out to greet us 
 with four or five of her ten fatherless children 
 clinging to her skirts. 
 
 There were no words of complaint. She
 
 THE BECKONING OF THE WAND 27 
 
 listened quietly to our halting words of sympathy, 
 and then spoke resignedly, merely stating facts. 
 
 "And I'm not the only one left desolate in 
 the parish," she said. "There's Margit Carmody 
 gone, God rest her soul, an' she leaving a 
 houseful of children after her, an' they do say 
 Hugh M'Gloyne is going, an' him with five 
 young gossoons. Oh, 'tis a terrible year of 
 orphans, that it is, God Almighty help us all." 
 
 Another long lane, this time leading back 
 from bog to uplands, took us to the home of 
 Ellen Muldoon which she shares with a blind 
 old friend or rather cousin Margaret Flynn. 
 It is a good house, but Ellen, who is over 
 seventy and is doubled with rheumatism to 
 within three feet of the ground, is not able to 
 keep it as she would wish. " It has pleased 
 God to leave me very small," she told us once, 
 peering up into our faces, " but what matter ! 
 His holy will be done." 
 
 She is a lone woman, the last of an old
 
 28 THE BECKONING OF THE WAND 
 
 family who have come down in the world. She 
 has worked hard all her life, but has kept a 
 brave heart, aye, and a merry one, through all. 
 
 " You wouldn't think to see the place now," 
 she said, "that 'twas meself was reared in 
 it, so tender, under fourteen cows. But God's 
 good," she added cheerfully, " sending poor 
 Margaret to keep me company when He took 
 the last of me own to Himself. That was me 
 sister Marcelle, an' she after lying there twelve 
 years an' not a stir out of her, hand or foot, 
 the creature ! " 
 
 "And you minded her all that time, Ellen, 
 did you ? " we asked. 
 
 " To be sure an' I did, then. An' now it's 
 Margaret I have to mind. She gets that fretful 
 time an' again," she added in a lower voice as 
 a querulous voice comes from the kitchen, "and 
 what wonder, with her affliction, but one must 
 be doing something for God's sake." 
 
 Margaret was sitting despondently over the
 
 THE BECKONING OF THE WAND 29 
 
 fire, her beads in her hands. She was cheered 
 by the sweets we had brought her, and after 
 eating a large and very strong peppermint 
 lozenge, she began to talk in less doleful tones 
 of bygone days. Her stories had been told to 
 us many times before, but it pleased her to 
 repeat them once again. 
 
 " She'll be heartened up this long while, so 
 she will," Ellen assured us, "after her chat with 
 you to-day." 
 
 It was late when at last we reached the village, 
 and, climbing a short steep staircase, entered a 
 spotlessly clean room, where Rosie Macminn lay 
 dying. She was quite young, not much over 
 twenty, but the hectic flush on her wan face, 
 the thin white fingers that clasped our own, told 
 their tale of the ravages of decline. A heap of 
 booklets lay ready to be returned to us, and eager 
 eyes sought out the new ones we had brought. 
 In husky tones she begged a favour : might she 
 her time was now so short, and, unlike most
 
 30 THE BECKONING OF THE WAND 
 
 consumptives, she recognised the fact might she 
 keep one little book, her favourite. It was 
 "Aline," published by the Irish Catholic Truth 
 Society. " I like to read what she suffered," 
 Rosie whispered, "for it helps me to thank 
 God that I have no pain to bear, only just to 
 lie here and wait." Yes, truly her time of 
 waiting to see God would be short. Angels 
 seemed already to be watching for that patient 
 soul. 
 
 The last house on our round though poor 
 was clean also, and fairly well aired, and here 
 again a young woman was waiting for death. We 
 told Mary Dowd of those others whom we 
 had visited, of the girl only a few years her 
 junior who, like herself, was dying. Her disease 
 is usually a most painful one, but, thank God, 
 Mary had been spared from veiy great suffering, 
 and through all, through weariness, through 
 discomfort, through pain the same words were 
 ever on her lips.
 
 THE BECKONING OF THE WAND 31 
 
 " If He would take me to Himself wouldn't 
 it be good for me, but His holy will be done." 
 
 Once again she said this as we bade her good- 
 bye and turned our faces towards home. 
 
 Ah, Joan ! they do make one feel ashamed of 
 oneself, these patient sufferers ! 
 
 The sun was sinking in the west, the rooks 
 were cawing lazily in the great, overhanging trees, 
 the water of the river glimmered under the 
 crimson and gold of sunset, the air was filled 
 with summer scents and sounds ; then a wave 
 of thanksgiving rose up within us, and three 
 words came to us suddenly, " Laetus sorte mea." 
 Yes, Joan, in spite of the sad deficiencies of 
 Ireland, I say and feel it, " My lines have fallen 
 in pleasant places, and happy is my lot. "--Your 
 
 loving 
 
 PATRICIA.
 
 Ill 
 
 MY DEAR JOAN, You say that my friends live 
 in inaccessible places, but it really is not the case 
 with all of them, for old D'Arcy, "the widow- 
 man's " wife, was one of my friends, and you 
 know where his house is. It stands alone, apart 
 from its neighbours, a slated building showing 
 white against a lonely background of green. The 
 waters of a wide lake lap the causeway leading 
 to it, and the cry of the seagull, the coot, and 
 the plover make its solitude seem deeper than 
 it really is. Mrs D'Arcy was the mother of 
 seven sons, but God had sent no daughter to 
 her, and in her old age she was left to the rough 
 tenderness of her old husband, whilst the two boys 
 spared by the emigration fever worked for their 
 
 parents. 
 
 32
 
 THE BECKONING OF THE WAND 33 
 
 When first I knew her she was tall, almost 
 stately in her carriage, with smooth, olive skin 
 and black eyes that betrayed a dash of gipsy 
 blood. She was never quite like her neighbours, 
 and from the time of her illness this difference 
 gradually increased. I had known her all my 
 life. I remember as a little girl clattering on a 
 shaggy pony along the stony causeway near her 
 house to borrow one of her snowy muslin caps for 
 private theatricals and receiving, with the cap and 
 many blessings, a piece of home-baked oatcake, 
 liberally covered with brown sugar. But our real 
 friendship began only about six years ago, when 
 first she fell ill. 
 
 No one seemed to know what was the matter, 
 but the pains that bowed the once straight back 
 and bent the once active figure were put down 
 to the close proximity of the lake, and it was 
 only after weary months had passed that the 
 symptoms of creeping paralysis disclosed them- 
 selves. Day after day, week after week, she sat
 
 34 THE BECKONING OF THE WAND 
 
 in the chimney corner, growing more and more 
 helpless, more and more suffering. At first her 
 mind was clear and active. The enforced idleness 
 was physical pain to her, and the least wrinkle in 
 her kerchief, the least unevenness in the goffering 
 of her muslin cap, washed, ironed, and made up 
 by the clumsy, patient hands of the old man, 
 were causes of querulous complaint. 
 
 The new housekeeper was wonderfully skilful 
 in his work. At first he kept the house as clean 
 as when "herself" was about, but by degrees, as 
 the disease crept slowly on, things went worse. 
 She needed more attention than at first ; over 
 and over again in the night she called him to 
 her, only, perhaps, to smooth a sheet or raise a 
 pillow, but his rest was disturbed, and he became 
 older, more broken, ever less able to do the work 
 that grew and pressed upon him. The boys were 
 out from early dawn to dark, and sometimes Mrs 
 D'Arcy was left quite alone. Then if I came by, 
 there was a search for the cottage key, for, like
 
 THE BECKONING OF THE WAND 35 
 
 a child, she was locked in. Under the black pot, 
 in the potato basket on the wall, in the tufts of 
 marsh grass near the gate, every possible hiding- 
 place was searched, and usually with success. 
 Entering, I used to find her sunk in her wicker 
 chair, veritably doubled in two, and fastened 
 round her waist, to the ladder leading to the 
 sleeping loft above. This was a necessary pre- 
 caution when the fire was so near : once, indeed, 
 I found her with her sacking apron smouldering 
 unnoticed at her feet, and a live ember lying 
 upon it. 
 
 "Who is it 1 have?" was her invariable 
 question as I opened the door, and the answer 
 always brought me the same greeting : " God be 
 good to you, daughter machree." Then sitting 
 in the close dark kitchen I had to listen to her 
 moans. She could not, could not, resign herself 
 to powerlessness or to suffering. I had to feel 
 her fingers, to raise her poor bowed head, that of 
 itself could not keep straight, and with those
 
 36 THE BECKONING OF THE WAND 
 
 pleading, agonised eyes upon me, how could I tell 
 the naked truth, and say that I saw no improve- 
 ment, knew no cure was possible? And so my 
 words of comfort came stumblingly. It seemed 
 so meaningless for me, sitting still for half an 
 hour, coming in from the outer sunshine, from 
 the living interests of my own life, to speak to 
 this rigid pain-racked prisoner of her purgatory 
 in this world, of the crown that suffering alone 
 can win. And what I said never brought her 
 consolation. Only a torrent of tears and sobs 
 that shook and weakened her, and the ever- 
 repeated cry : " Why should I be taken so, 
 daughter dear? Why should it just be me?" 
 They grew more painful, these visits, as time went 
 on, and often I let weeks pass without going to 
 see her, thinking it was better so. But always 
 when I met the old man he used to say that she 
 was asking for me, and again I went, and again 
 came the hopeless questionings, the seemingly 
 useless replies.
 
 THE BECKONING OF THE WAND 37 
 
 It was in Holy Week, four years ago, that I 
 went, and at last I had found words not my 
 own to answer her. I gave no time for more 
 than the usual greeting. 
 
 " I have brought you a book to - day, Mrs 
 D'Arcy," I said. " It is Good Friday, and I am 
 going to read the Passion of our Lord to you." 
 
 And, sitting on a stool, with the firelight 
 playing on the pages where in the morning I 
 had read to myself the inspired lines, I now 
 read them to her. 
 
 She listened attentively. From the first her 
 mind, cleared for the moment of the cloud that 
 was growing over it, seized and understood the 
 Evangelist's words. The light outside was fading, 
 but the turf gleamed bright about us. A cricket 
 sang in the chimney, and a half-starved kitten, 
 climbing to my knee, was purring unsteadily 
 towards the flames that it loved. All 'else was 
 silence. 
 
 " And Pilate took Jesus and scourged Him ;
 
 88 THE BECKONING OF THE WAND 
 
 and the soldiers plaiting a crown of thorns put 
 it upon His head, and they gave Him blows." 
 And so through all the story of that supreme 
 suffering. " Jesus therefore said, ' It is consum- 
 mated,' and, bowing His head, He gave up the 
 ghost." 
 
 Then in the silence came the well - known 
 sound of weeping, but looking up I saw an un- 
 known light shining through Mrs D'Arcy's tears. 
 
 " Ochone ! Ochone ! An' all the tears I've 
 wasted on meself ! An' all the complaints because 
 He likened me to Himself by suffering. I know 
 it, daughter dear, but tell me again. It was for 
 me He suffered ? " 
 
 " Yes, Mrs D'Arcy, it was for you." 
 
 No days of respite came, no hours of relief. 
 Only as time elapsed the actual pain was less 
 as one by one her limbs grew numb and dead. 
 I visited her often, heard how this new pain 
 and that had taken her, but for four long years 
 since that visit at Passiontide I never heard
 
 one word of repining or of complaint to pass 
 those lips. Resignation, complete and heroic, 
 had sealed them for ever. For some months 
 her speech had failed her so much that only 
 with the old man's help was I able to under- 
 stand her. Her mind too was growing more 
 confused, yet she knew me to the end of this 
 living death. 
 
 Once again I went that way. The sun was 
 setting, a golden ball sinking into the waters of 
 the lake with a gleaming path of light leading 
 to it. 
 
 A black figure came out of the white-washed 
 house, and, approaching each other, we met upon 
 the causeway. It was the priest. 
 
 " Yes, she is dead," he said, then, raising his hat, 
 " and blessed are the dead who die in the Lord." 
 
 PATRICIA.
 
 IV 
 
 MY DEAR JOAN, I wish you had known Mrs 
 Dirrane ; she would have softened your heart 
 towards Ireland better than any letter of mine 
 could do. The whiteness of her frilled cap would 
 have appealed to you, and the neatness of her 
 red petticoat and fawn-coloured shawl could not 
 have escaped you, even if you had not noticed the 
 expression of her face. The leading note of her 
 life was the praise of God. I will explain to you 
 what I mean by this. My knowledge of Gaelic 
 is slight very slight still I can follow the words 
 of the " Hail Mary " which Sunday after Sunday 
 I hear murmured in tones of varied intensity by 
 the tightly serried ranks of patient, benchless men 
 
 and women kneeling on the cold cement of the 
 
 40
 
 THE BECKONING OP THE WAND 41 
 
 chapel floor, with faces upturned towards the 
 altar, but eyes that look beyond and above it. 
 Betty Dirrane, pressed against the sanctuary rails, 
 gave me, and every one else around, the benefit 
 of her prayers. As the well-worn beads of her 
 rosary passed slowly through her ringers it struck 
 me that her words did not fall in with the rhythm 
 of the others, and, listening, I recognised the 
 difference. 
 
 " Betty," I said, when next I met her, " will 
 you tell me why it is that you say the ' Hail 
 Mary ' twice to every once you say the ' Holy 
 Mary'?" 
 
 " Daughter dear, I'll tell you, an' no lie," she 
 answered. " Isn't the ' Holy Mary ' nothing but a 
 trouble to the Mother of God, askin' her prayers 
 and the like ? and I'd be ashamed not to be praisin' 
 her twict with the two ' Hail Marys ' for the onct 
 I'd go troublin' her wid the ' Holy Mary.' ' 
 
 Ballynaraggit was never Betty's home. She 
 lived away on the coast, and her only son,
 
 42 THE BECKONING OF THE WAND 
 
 Coleman, was a sailor in the Royal Navy. But 
 even in foreign parts he never forgot his mother. 
 News came from him at distant intervals, it is 
 true, yet with a certain regularity. He sent her 
 money in the spring to pay for the setting of " the 
 lock o' praties that was her whole dependence," 
 and in the autumn to provide for the cutting 
 and saving of the turf. It was this autumn 
 letter that was missing in the last year of Betty's 
 life, and as the days passed by its absence brought 
 two anxious puckers that furrowed round her 
 patient eyes. 
 
 Whenever we met I used to ask her if she 
 had had news of Coleman, and the same answer 
 always came : " Sorra a word, asthore. But 
 there'll be a letter comin' to me from him against 
 the Chris-e-mas." 
 
 It seemed cruel to go on asking, and as time 
 went on and I saw the puckers deepen I gave 
 up my query, but Betty noticed my omission at 
 once. " There's no letter still from Coleman,
 
 THE BECKONING OF THE WAND 43 
 
 daughter dear, but there's one acomin' to me 
 against the Chris-e-mas." 
 
 It was this hope nay, more than hope this 
 firm conviction, that God would not leave her 
 lonesome at Christmas, that kept Betty Dirrane 
 alive during those winter months, but the silence 
 on the part of her boy was telling on her sadly. 
 She was growing frailer and more bent, and, 
 though she never complained, the exertion of 
 the long walk to Mass on Sundays, which, wet 
 or fine, she never missed, was paid for by the 
 aching of her weary limbs. I met her on 
 Christmas Eve and noticed how she had altered. 
 
 "No, then," she said, answering my unspoken 
 question, " I've no word from Coleman, but, 
 praise be to God, I'll be hearin' from him in 
 the mornin'." 
 
 It was not going to be a white Christmas, 
 as you know we seldom have lying snow in the 
 West, but 1 remember that there was frost in 
 the air. A wintry sun was glimmering upon
 
 44 
 
 the waters of Galway Bay and lightening the 
 grey haze that enshrouded the grey distance of 
 this grey country where wall after wall of 
 granite boulders bound the view on every side, 
 excepting towards the sea. 
 
 The chapel walls, grey granite too, were a 
 shelter from the strong, yet soft western wind 
 that blows in to us persistently from Arran. 
 Inside the church the priest was seated at the 
 altar rails hearing confessions, for confessionals 
 are unknown in our parish, and besides those 
 kneeling at the farther end of the chapel, there 
 was a waiting group without. These were chiefly 
 men and boys, clad in loose white "bawneen" 
 jackets, made out of locally woven homespun 
 flannel, and grey-blue or white trousers of the 
 same material, cut on no scientific principle, and 
 patched on no pre-arranged system. Betty and 
 a few other women were busy at the gate 
 putting on, before entering the House of God, 
 the boots and stockings which they had carried
 
 THE BECKONING OF THE WAND 45 
 
 under their arms whilst they walked barefoot for 
 miles down the boreens and over the boglands 
 to "make their souls" for Christmas. 
 
 "It's to the Midnight Mass I'll be, please 
 God," said Betty, "and I'll wait then in Flynn's 
 below till the post comes in with Coleman's 
 letter. God's good, asthore ! He'll never let 
 the Chris-e-mas over me without word from the 
 boy." 
 
 It was always the same with her. She knew 
 that God would not fail her, and surely such 
 faith would be rewarded. But in spite of her 
 brave words, of her simple trust in the goodness 
 of God, I saw more plainly than ever how these 
 months of silent waiting had aged and altered 
 her. Could she ever walk the two long Irish 
 miles that lay between her house and the chapel 
 in time to assist at the so-called Midnight Mass 
 on Christmas day ? It was a Midnight Mass 
 in name alone, for seven o'clock was the actual 
 hour at which it began. But it was night and
 
 46 THE BECKONING OF THE WAND 
 
 dark night when we left our homes to assist 
 at it, and so it kept the name of what it repre- 
 sented. 
 
 As I rose to leave the chapel on the 24th I 
 saw Betty kneeling in a distant corner. Her face 
 was upraised, her lips were moving. I could 
 not hear the torrent of soft Gaelic that was 
 pouring from them, but I knew that interspersed 
 through her praise were prayers to which for 
 her sake, I added my mite for news of the 
 absent Coleman. 
 
 One by one the men and women, after going 
 to confession, finished their prayers, and passed 
 out of the chapel. Only Betty remained motion- 
 less there, whilst a stream of newcomers took the 
 place of those who had already " been with the 
 priest." 
 
 Before me as I walked down the path leading 
 to the road was a man I knew well by sight, 
 Mike Carroll, a weak, good - natured creature, 
 everybody's friend except his own. At the gate
 
 THE BECKONING OF THE WAND 47 
 
 a passer-by stopped to speak to him, and as I 
 approached he was evidently trying to persuade 
 Carroll to go to Galway with him, probably to 
 join in a Christmas spree, but the answer was 
 decided enough. 
 
 " I will not," said Carroll. 
 
 "Where are you goin', then?" asked the 
 tempter. 
 
 " Home," responded Carroll shortly. " An' 
 get along wid you. Don't you know that I'm 
 in a state o' grace and I don't want to get quit 
 of it ? " 
 
 Thank God, there were very few in the parish 
 that night who were not in a state of grace, 
 and next morning, in the deep darkness that 
 precedes the dawn, they made their way over 
 hill and stony valley, along rough boreens and 
 high roads scarcely smoother, from their white- 
 walled yellow - thatched homes to the poor 
 chapel, which was the finest dwelling that they 
 could provide for their Best Friend. Yet in
 
 48 THE BECKONING OF THE WAND 
 
 that bare, barn-like building a heartier welcome 
 awaited the Christ- Child than many a stately 
 Church can offer Him. They were quiet and 
 orderly, but so tightly packed together that, 
 looking down the chapel, it seemed like a sea 
 of faces, showing sickly yellow in the flickering 
 of the dip candles, which, stuck in the tin sconces 
 along the skirting board of the walls, formed all 
 the illumination we could boast of. All through 
 the Mass there was a continual murmur of prayer, 
 but at the Elevation the voices rose, the words 
 became articulate, and, as the priest held up the 
 Sacred Host, from four hundred lips came forth 
 the greeting, heart-stirring in its intensity : " Caed 
 mille failte ! " A hundred thousand welcomes to 
 the Christ-Child come again to earth. 
 
 We were still sitting round the remains of our 
 Christmas turkey, when a message came to me 
 from Betty. It was Gilbert Dirrane, a friend, or 
 as you would say, a relation of her late husband's, 
 who had brought it.
 
 THE BECKONING OF THE WAND 49 
 
 " Betty wants to see you." 
 
 Such a call on such a day was very unusual, 
 and it occurred to me at once that there had 
 been no letter, and the blow, the disappointment 
 had been too much for her. 
 
 " Was there no word from Coleman, then ? " 
 1 asked. 
 
 " Oh, there was word, fair and clean, yer 
 honor," replied Gilbert. "Thank God, 'tisn't 
 the heart but the ould back on her that's broke, 
 the creature ! 'Twas this way it happened, not 
 to be delayin' yer honor. She'd got her letter 
 below in Flynn's, an' I seen her meself go 
 hoppin' down the street wid it, as proud as you 
 please, for all the world like a newly married flea ! 
 when bad scran to them gossoons who'd been 
 slidin' down the toe-path away go the two legs 
 from in under her, and she kem a heavy fall 
 on the flags." 
 
 " Oh, poor old Betty ! " I cried. " And is she 
 badly hurt?"
 
 50 
 
 "Badly is it? Sure it's the life itself that's 
 knocked out of her ! But the whole thing that's 
 troublin' her now is Coleman's letter. We were 
 for to carry her into Flynn's again, but she gave 
 us no peace until we left her home in her own 
 place, where she thought to find the specs of her. 
 But glory be weren't they in her pocket all 
 the time, and smashed to smithereens in the fall. 
 An' now there's not a one but yer honor that she'll 
 ask to read the letter for her, an' she holdin' to it 
 all the while, wid the dews o' death on th' ould 
 fingers of her." 
 
 I went, and when I entered, the neighbours 
 who were in the cottage moved away and left 
 us alone. Gilbert Dirrane was right. Even I 
 could see that "the life itself was knocked out 
 of her," and the hand that feebly held my own 
 was, as he said, already growing cold and numb. 
 She gave me the letter, and at a glance I saw 
 that no village lad had written the address, 
 scored over with blue pencil marks in correction
 
 THE BECKONING OF THE WAND 51 
 
 of what had been first set down. Her eyes, 
 bright and searching, the only living things 
 about the rigid old body, were on me, and under 
 pretext of seeking more light I went to the 
 window. God had indeed not left her over the 
 Christmas without news of her boy. But could 
 I, dared I, must I tell her what the letter con- 
 tained ? It was short only a few lines from the 
 chaplain of the station whence Coleman last had 
 written. It told of fever, of a lingering illness, 
 borne bravely, of a young sailor's death, in a 
 foreign land, 'tis true, but with a priest beside 
 him, who had helped him into the Harbour over 
 the Bar. 
 
 " What's the news, asthore ? What's the 
 news that Coleman's sent me for the Chris-e- 
 mas ? " 
 
 The weak voice reached me only in a whisper, 
 and for a moment I could not answer. 
 
 Then I went back to the bedside. 
 
 " It is good news, Betty," I said. " The priest
 
 52 THE BECKONING OF THE WAND 
 
 beyond has written to give you news for Christmas, 
 because he says that Coleman that Coleman has 
 gone home." 
 
 " Coleman comin' home 1 Sweet praises be to 
 the Great God and to His Son, a Child to-day on 
 earth for us." 
 
 She went off into Gaelic, communing with 
 God and thanking Him. Her eyelids fell, 
 leaving her face like that of one already dead. 
 I did not regret what I had said. Truly it was 
 good news, and soon, when she learnt the decep- 
 tion of the way I had told it to her, I knew 
 she would forgive me. But sooner than I 
 thought did the real truth come to her. The 
 Angel of Death had already entered the cottage, 
 and perhaps it was some light from him that 
 revealed it to her. 
 
 Suddenly she opened her eyes widely and 
 looked up at me. 
 
 "Don't be afraid, daughter dear," she said. 
 " It's goin' to God I am, so tell me the truth.
 
 THE BECKONING OF THE WAND 53 
 
 Is it home to Ireland, or home to God, that 
 Coleman's gone ? " 
 
 " Betty dear, Betty dear, 'tis home to God." 
 
 " Oh, the goodness of Him. Oh ! the good- 
 ness to the likes o' me. Sweet praises be to 
 Him " 
 
 Gilbert Dirrane's wife had crept back into 
 the house, and now she came over to me. 
 
 " She wouldn't miss y'r honor now," she 
 whispered, "if you'd be for to go." 
 
 I knew what she meant, but just then Betty 
 opened her eyes and spoke in the voice I knew 
 of old. 
 
 " Christ Himself is waitin' for me," she said ; 
 " Christ Himself and Coleman." 
 
 Then she lay still and again young Mrs 
 Dirrane motioned to me to go. 
 
 " It came against the Chris-e-mas." Betty's 
 voice was a whisper now, clear, but so faint as 
 to be hardly audible. "Sweet praises be " 
 
 I went out, and away home, for her own
 
 54 THE BECKONING OF THE WAND 
 
 people could do more now for Betty than I 
 could. I was awestruck, perhaps, but hardly 
 saddened, for I knew that Betty and her boy 
 would spend their Christmas night together in 
 the " Harbour over the Bar." 
 
 They told me, afterwards, that she never 
 spoke again. I had heard her very last words. 
 
 " Sweet praises be to God." 
 
 PATRICIA.
 
 V 
 
 MY DEAR JOAN, You say that people like 
 those I have described to you may have lived 
 in Ireland in the good old days, but that, as all 
 my friends are dead now, what I say of them 
 counts as nothing against the disagreeables of 
 to-day. You are wrong. All my friends, I am 
 glad to say, are not dead, and I will tell you of 
 one who is not only still living, but even now is 
 little more than a child. Andy Connell's Mary 
 does not live at Ballynaraggit, it was away in 
 the south that I made her acquaintance. 
 
 At the place where we were staying a thick 
 yew hedge skirts the home coverts, broken only 
 at long intervals by high wooden gates. The 
 
 gloom of the woods, low-lying, and of luxuriant 
 
 55
 
 56 THE BECKONING OF THE WAND 
 
 growth as they are, is in such strong contrast to 
 the sunny, heather-clad bog outside, that when 
 we left the shade of the pine-trees, and crossed 
 out through the gamekeeper's yard on to the 
 open land of the turf beyond, we were half 
 dazzled by the brilliant colouring of the scene 
 that lay before us. Every shade was there, from 
 palest yellow to rich red - brown ; the purple 
 heather; the grass, late summer though it was, 
 still a vivid green in places ; the silvery glimmer 
 here and there of pools and streamlets, and in 
 the far distance a range of deep blue hills. 
 
 As soon as our eyes had grown used to the 
 radiance of the sunshine, our attention was 
 caught by a spot of colour in the foreground. 
 A child, pink-clad, stood upon a felled tree that 
 spanned the first bog drain, her brown bare feet 
 clinging to the rough bark a graceful little figure, 
 swaying slightly to keep its balance, with arm 
 upraised to shade the sun off the uncovered head. 
 
 As the little group of guns and ladies
 
 THE BECKONING OF THE WAND 57 
 
 approached, followed by keepers and dogs, the 
 child turned towards us, first frightened, then 
 half smiling though still shy. 
 
 Our host was well known to her, but his 
 guests were strangers. As her retreat was cut 
 off, she shrank back to where her father, the 
 head man amongst the keepers, stood, and from 
 his side she fearlessly returned the friendly looks 
 that were cast upon her. 
 
 " Well, Mary, are you coming to show us 
 where your daddy has all the birds in waiting ? " 
 said our host as he passed her by, and in reply 
 she made the little curtsy that her mother had 
 taught her always to make in his honour. 
 
 She was close to me now, and I could not 
 resist stretching out my hand and laying it upon 
 her head. " What hair ! " I exclaimed to my 
 companion as the silky strands of gold slipped 
 through my fingers. Then turning to our host, 
 "Fancy Lady Emily's joy at finding this head," 
 I said, referring to a fellow guest whom even the
 
 58 THE BECKONING OF THE WAND 
 
 beauty of that morning had not tempted out. 
 " Why, she'd give its weight in gold for such a 
 crop ! " 
 
 Our host smiled in return, picturing perhaps 
 the difference between this bogland fairy, with 
 Nature's gift flowing free on the breezes, and the 
 world-worn woman who tried so hard to make 
 up the deficiencies of her own head by the help 
 of the hairdresser's art. 
 
 " Do you hear that, Mary ? You need never 
 be in want of money, for you carry a gold mine 
 in your wig." He laughed again, but Andy 
 Connell looked grave. 
 
 Perhaps he was right in thinking that such 
 jests, which she only half understood, were not 
 good for his little daughter, and he bade her run 
 off quickly and go home to her mother. 
 
 As she turned to obey I bade her good-bye. 
 " Good-bye, Goldylocks," I said, and my greeting 
 was replied to by a dimple of pleasure in her 
 rosy cheeks.
 
 THE BECKONING OF THE WAND 59 
 
 From what I learned later from Mrs Connell I 
 can quite imagine what happened between then 
 and my next meeting with little Goldylocks. 
 
 On reaching home Mary told of the meet- 
 ing and what we had said to her. A look of 
 gratified pride sprang up in the mother's eyes, but 
 to Mary it seemed as though she, as well as her 
 daddy, were not quite pleased at what had passed. 
 
 " Handsome is as handsome does, child," was 
 all she said. "Don't forget that the more God 
 Almighty has given to you, the more He will 
 expect you to give Him. Hair or no hair, all I 
 ask is that you'll grow up to be a good girl." 
 
 So the matter was dismissed and Mary went 
 on to speak of other topics. 
 
 "Mother, there's no smoke comin' out of 
 Lukie's chimney. Is it ill do you think he is ? 
 I was looking for it on the foot-bridge when the 
 ladies and gentleman came by." 
 
 "No smoke, is it? An' he maybe lyin' help- 
 less, the creature ! Run over, Maineen, and see
 
 60 THE BECKONING OF THE WAND 
 
 what's on him, then. Here, you can take a sup 
 o' milk along with you and the full of your bib 
 of new potaties." 
 
 Thus burdened Mary set forth towards the 
 old man's dwelling, which was distant only half 
 a mile along the bog edge. From afar the house 
 looked like a heap of loose stones with grass 
 and weeds growing over them. No window was 
 to be seen. No chimney showed where the fire- 
 place lay, the hole by which the smoke escaped 
 being invisible. A few fowls were gathered 
 round the doorway. Except for these no sight 
 or sound of life was there. 
 
 " Are you within, Lukie ? It's Mary you have, 
 and me mother's sent you a drop o' milk an' a 
 wee lock o' praties." 
 
 No answer was forthcoming, and after a 
 moment the child entered the hovel. On some 
 grimy sacks, filled with straw that covered a 
 broken wooden bedstead, the old man was lying. 
 At first Mary thought he was asleep, but, drawing
 
 THE BECKONING OF THE WAND 61 
 
 nearer, a sound as of low moaning fell upon her 
 ears, and she saw that, with his face turned to the 
 wall, he was crying silently and bitterly. She had 
 never seen a man in tears before, and her own 
 sprang, in ready sympathy, to her eyes. 
 
 " What is it, Lukie ? " she cried. " Are you 
 sick ? Are you hungry ? Oh, tell me what I 
 can do to make you better ? " 
 
 " Tis Maineen, is it ? God bless you, alanna, 
 and God bless them that sent you to a poor 
 old dying man." 
 
 Dying ! She had heard the word too often to 
 fear it, yet there was awe in the thought that 
 her old friend was soon to be claimed by death. 
 
 " Is it dying that makes you cry, Lukie ? " 
 she asked. " I thought you wanted God to take 
 
 you." 
 
 " It's dyin', then, an' it isn't dyin'," replied the 
 old man, half comforted. "For indeed I'll be 
 better off, please God, beyont than ever I was 
 here, but oh, Mary, me heart is broke entirely,
 
 62 THE BECKONING OF THE WAND 
 
 to think that the last o' the name should 
 should lie in a parish coffin'." 
 
 And, the words spoken, so full of shame to 
 one whose family had been known and respected 
 for generations unnumbered, once more Luke 
 Gibney lifted up his voice and wept. 
 
 Then Mary, kneeling beside him, mingled 
 her tears with his, and, heedless of the potatoes 
 that rolled away as she loosed hold of her 
 apron, listened, breathless, to his tale of woe, 
 sympathised, wept again, and finally tried to 
 comfort. 
 
 He had always hoped, aye, and worked with 
 that end in view, to lay by enough to bury him 
 beside his forefathers, in a coffin bought and paid 
 for. The neighbours, in charity, would carry 
 him to his last resting-place, and his ashes then 
 would mingle in peace with those others of his 
 family whom in life or death he had not dis- 
 graced. But the struggle was too hard. How 
 could he, old feeble and alone, keep body and
 
 THE BECKONING OF THE WAND 63 
 
 soul together, or much less save for that future 
 event, which was coming so certainly towards 
 him. A pound, a whole golden pound, would 
 be wanted to bury him as he wished, and he 
 had scarcely seen the glint even of silver for 
 years. 
 
 Mary, her faith boundless in father and mother, 
 promised in their names that Lukie should be 
 buried " dacent " ; that his name need never 
 figure on the workhouse list, but keen as were 
 his shame and sorrow, rending his heart and 
 embittering his last days on earth, he would not 
 listen to this proposal. 
 
 Andy Connell and his wife were no longer 
 young when the child had been sent, a heavenly 
 gift to them, and well the old man knew that 
 every spare penny in the gamekeeper's house 
 was wanted to assure the future of their darling. 
 
 As Luke spoke, an idea, bright and beautiful, 
 yet bringing with it a strange sharp pang, rose 
 up in Mary's mind.
 
 64 THE BECKONING OF THE WAND 
 
 " You need never be in want of money, Mary, 
 you have a gold mine in your wig." And again, 
 "Lady Emily would give all she possesses for 
 such a crop of hair." And lastly, her mother's 
 words, " Hair or no hair, all I ask is that you 
 grow up to be a good girl." 
 
 " Lukie," whispered Mary, and her voice was 
 trembling, " if I had the money, twenty shillings 
 of my very own, not belonging to father or to 
 mother but only to me, would you take that to 
 buy a coffin and then would you die content ? " 
 Even in his sorrow the childish earnestness 
 touched the old man. 
 
 " I couldn't refuse my little Maineen. I'd take 
 it gladly if she had it to give," he said, laying his 
 shaking hand on the child's brown clasped ones. 
 
 Her sympathy did much to console him, though 
 he thought the possession of a sovereign was as 
 far from the child as it was from him himself, 
 and solely to please her he accepted the impossible 
 offer.
 
 THE BECKONING OF THE WAND 65 
 
 Even to her mother Mary did not speak of 
 what she meant to do. A struggle was going 
 on in her heart, the hardest struggle her young 
 life had ever known. On one side was her hair, 
 the soft, warm, golden fleece that she loved as, 
 consciously or unconsciously, each one loves and 
 clings to her own beauties. And on the other 
 side was Lukie. 
 
 She thought of her head, cold, ragged, shorn, 
 and in contrast came the words that I had spoken 
 laughingly in farewell, " Good-bye, Goldylocks." 
 Never again would any one call her so, never 
 again, for years and years and years. 
 
 She was quiet that night, subdued, unlike 
 herself, but her mother put it down to sorrow 
 at old Luke's approaching end, and she thanked 
 God for giving her child such a tender, loving 
 heart. How tender, how unselfish even she did 
 not yet know. She did not see the tears that 
 wet the pillow, did not hear the choking sobs 
 that shook the childish frame as she and Andy 
 
 B
 
 66 THE BECKONING OF THE WAND 
 
 sat at their supper below in the kitchen when 
 the little one had gone to bed. 
 
 At eight o'clock in the morning, the postman, 
 another friend of Andy Connell's Mary, passed up 
 the avenue to the " great house." At the darkest 
 part of the road, where the undergrowth is rank 
 and wild and covered in by the drooping branches 
 of over-hanging trees, a little woebegone figure 
 awaited him. A big pair of scissors hung, points 
 down, half open from one hand ; a brown paper 
 parcel, soft, pressing inwards where the twine 
 passed round, was in the other. Summer though 
 it was, a woollen tarn - o' - shanter was dragged 
 down to the nape of the neck behind, whilst in 
 front it rested almost on the delicately pencilled 
 eyebrows. 
 
 " Put it in the bag, please, Patsey. Tis a 
 parcel for her ladyship," and, pushing the packet 
 into the postman's hands, she darted off, and 
 was lost to sight in the sheltering green of the 
 shrubbery.
 
 THE BECKONING OF THE WAND 67 
 
 For a few moments she continued running, 
 then, reaching a favourite moss-grown haunt, she 
 threw herself face downwards on the ground. 
 " Goldylocks ! " she sobbed, " they'll never call 
 me that again ! Oh ! my hair, my hair, my 
 hair." 
 
 The post-bag was opened in the " great house," 
 during the course of a late breakfast. There 
 were no letters for me, and Lady Emily, who 
 was busy with a pile of correspondence, nodded 
 a careless acquiescence when I offered to undo 
 her parcels for her. The first one I took up was 
 soft and bulgy, with no stamps upon it, and 
 two wet raindrops blotting the address. 
 
 I held it up to have the string cut by our 
 host, who was helping himself to a Scotchman's 
 share of porridge at the side -table, and there, 
 with my back turned to the others, T opened it. 
 A scrap of paper lay on top, and under it lay 
 masses upon masses of golden hair. Luck had 
 favoured me. Fancy if Lady Emily had opened
 
 68 THE BECKONING OF THE WAND 
 
 the parcel before us all, or even if the others had 
 seen and laughed ! 
 
 Quickly I slipped the paper covering out of 
 sight under the table, but my lips brushed the 
 soft contents as I hid it away. 
 
 "MY LADY, MADAM," so ran the note in 
 laboured, childish characters, and there were the 
 same marks but now I knew they were not 
 raindrops as had blurred the address, " this 
 is my hair, please, as I do want money : a 
 gold pound to buy a coffin to bury Lukie 
 decent, so he'll die happy. From Andy Connell's 
 MARY." 
 
 Again fortune was kind. Lady Emily's letters 
 drove the parcel from her mind, and after breakfast 
 I was able unnoticed to take it from its hiding- 
 place and carry it out to where our host was 
 waiting for me on the lawn. We walked together 
 to the keeper's lodge, and I laid the parcel 
 silently in Mrs Connell's hands. 
 
 " May I have a piece to keep," I asked, after
 
 THE BECKONING OF THE WAND 69 
 
 a moment's pause, "to keep for my own?" and 
 Mrs Connell, raising a lock of gold, laid it 
 in my hand. Then she told me all. 
 
 "We have brought^Mary what she asked," I 
 said as she finished her story, for before this Mary 
 had confided everything to her. "Please may 
 we " 
 
 " Mary ! " 
 
 Shame-faced, still tear-stained, but with the 
 glimmer of golden stubble on her head, the child 
 came, answering her mother's call. 
 
 I held the coveted piece of money out to her, 
 and there was an instant's silence. 
 
 Then slipping on to the flagged floor beside the 
 child, I put my arms about her. 
 
 "Oh, Goldylocks," was all I said, "oh, 
 
 Goldylocks." 
 
 PATRICIA.
 
 VI 
 
 MY DEAR JOAN, So you have gone back to your 
 exile, and you tell me "there is nothing on earth 
 to do." I wonder what you will think when I 
 tell you of the first morning I spent after an 
 absence like yours. I had been away for nearly 
 a month, and the darkness when I arrived might 
 have been supposed to keep my return a secret, 
 so I sat down at my writing-table hoping for a 
 morning's peace. 
 
 One window of the library looks out, as you 
 know, on the terraces that lead to the river, the 
 other is on the same side of the house as the 
 hall door, and although trying to persuade myself 
 that our return was not yet publicly known, 
 
 experience warned me that before long this 
 
 70
 
 THE BECKONING OF THE WAND 71 
 
 window would frame the figure of some not 
 especially welcome visitor. 
 
 Nor was 1 mistaken. 
 
 The crinch-crunch of the gravel that first fell 
 faintly on my ears grew louder and more decided, 
 a shadow fell upon the grass, then those sounds 
 ceased, but the pause was not a silent one. A 
 self -announcing cough, deprecating, yet insistent, 
 fell with irritating regularity on my ears, and 
 when I looked up a familiar figure greeted my 
 eyes. Betsy Magee was an old pensioner, nay, 
 an old friend, and with a sigh of resignation less 
 deep than most others would have called up, I 
 raised the low window, and the morning's levee 
 began. 
 
 "I'm glad to see you up and about, Betty. I 
 hear you've had a bad turn whilst I was away." 
 
 " I had, then, glory be to God, but still now 
 that I am out of it, I can't complain." 
 
 Unconsciously Betty was a veritable heroine, for 
 once the terrible accesses of pain that attacked
 
 72 THE BECKONING OF THE WAND 
 
 her from time to time were over, no word of 
 complaint ever passed her lips. 
 
 " God's good," was her repeated cry, " and why 
 would I be talking when what He's sending will 
 bring me all the sooner to Himself." 
 
 " But I was terrible lonesome, jewel machree, 
 when I thought I was going, and you from home. 
 Whisper now," and she lowered her tone as she 
 drew still nearer. " You won't be forgettin' \fhat 
 I told you, and the bit of money that's in the 
 weeshy canister on the dresser." 
 
 " I won't forget, Betty. You know I've 
 promised you ever so often." 
 
 " But, daughter dear, you might be forgettin' 
 what you've promised, and you in foreign parts." 
 
 " I have it written down, and when you die, 
 wherever I am, I promise you'll be buried in a 
 coffin bought with your own money, and that 
 you'll lie beside your father and mother in the 
 old churchyard at Carriglea, and that the rest of 
 the money eleven shillings, isn't it? that's in
 
 THE BECKONING OF THE WAND 73 
 
 the canister will go to the priest for masses for 
 your soul, and you'll be prayed for on Sunday 
 like the best in the parish. Now, I haven't 
 forgotten, have I ? " 
 
 " Thanks be to God and His Blessed Mother, 
 and amn't 1 the great old woman to have the 
 likes o' you to do my bidding," and the habitual 
 smile that only intense pain, or the fear of being 
 buried in a pauper's grave ever banished, returned 
 to dimple the rosy old apple face, and she added 
 a formula used many a time before, " I can die 
 content now I've heard the words from your 
 lips." 
 
 Our conversation was put an end to by the 
 appearance of a second visitor. Neal Cornealy's 
 repute was none of the fairest. His children 
 were the wildest and worst attendants at school 
 and catechism. One of them had recently been 
 banished from my class as utterly hopeless, but 
 before his expulsion he gave me an answer that 
 I must tell you.
 
 74 THE BECKONING OF THE WAND 
 
 " What are sins of omission ? " was the 
 question, and half-a-dozen grimy hands were held 
 up to show that their owners knew the answer. 
 Amongst these volunteers, for a wonder, was 
 Shawn Cornealy he who usually knew nothing 
 when he was asked. 
 
 " Well, then, Shawn, tell me, what are sins of 
 omission ? " 
 
 " The sins I ought to have committed, and 
 didn't commit," came the glib reply, accompanied 
 by a broad grin of delight at such superior 
 knowledge. 
 
 " I came to ask y'r honor, me lady, for a bit of 
 a note," Neal Cornealy explained after a greeting 
 that was intended to be very respectful; "just 
 a bit of a note for the Magistrate, him that 
 comes out on the bicycle from Ballynaraggit. 
 You might have heard about a little matter of 
 a harness for the ass beyond," pointing vaguely 
 up the avenue with his stick. 
 
 " No, I have heard nothing about it, I have
 
 THE BECKONING OF THE WAND 75 
 
 been away from home. Well, and who does the 
 harness belong to ? " 
 
 " There's the whole thing," he replied, amuse- 
 ment and perplexity struggling for supremacy on 
 his face. " Bridget, that's herself (his wife), me 
 lady, she bought a little harness from a man 
 passing over the road, and she paid nine shillin' 
 for it, and if it was stole it wasn't she as stole it, 
 th' honest, decent woman." 
 
 " And you want me to tell this to the Resident 
 Magistrate ? Of course I wouldn't wish to doubt 
 you in any way, but where did Mrs Cornealy get 
 the nine shillings ? " 
 
 Neal changed his stick from one hand to the 
 other, and pushed back his hat, gazing vacantly 
 round in search of an inspiration. 
 
 " Y'r ladyship disremembers that I had a son 
 in Scotland?" 
 
 " And he sent you the money ? " 
 
 " I wouldn't be after telling you a lie, me 
 lady. He did not."
 
 76 THE BECKONING OF THE WAND 
 
 "Then, where did you get it?" 
 
 " 'Twas last Hollandtide, one day I was in 
 the town with turf, and Mr Brown comes to me. 
 ' Cornealy,' says he, * you had a son in Scotland ? ' 
 ' I have so, sir,' says I, ' an' never a word, good, 
 bad, or indifferent, did I hear from him, since the 
 day he set foot in it.' ' An' not a word will you 
 be hearin', I'm thinkin',' says he, * for he's not in it 
 now.' ' Where is it he's gone ? ' says 1. ' 'Twould 
 be hard to say that,' says he. So then I knew 
 poor Paddy was dead, for if he wasn't in the 
 lock-up, what else had the lawyers to say to 
 him. ' Did he get the priest ? ' says I. An', sure 
 enough, hadn't he the beautiful letter from the 
 priest beyont that's been the world o' comfort 
 to herself though she couldn't read a word of 
 it, an' meself no better. 'Thanks be to God,' 
 says I, 'an' were there wages due to him?' 
 Well, not to be delayin' y'r ladyship, 'twas this 
 new compensyation act as had the company 
 annoyed 'twas killed workin' on the railway he
 
 THE BECKONING OF THE WAND 77 
 
 was and when Mr Brown had done his writin' 
 'twas nine pound I got, and th' only thing Paddy 
 was ever worth to me, the Lord have mercy on 
 his soul." 
 
 "And your wife paid for the harness out of 
 that money ? " I asked. 
 
 "Well, I wouldn't go for to say it was 
 the very same shillin's that she paid," he said 
 cautiously. " Maybe 'twas, and maybe 'twas not. 
 But the peelers have me harness took, an' a bit 
 of a character from y'r honor is the only thing 
 that will serve, or I'll be ruinated entirely." 
 
 I went thoughtfully to my writing - table and 
 took up my pen. 
 
 "Neal Cornealy tells me he is a very honest 
 man," I wrote, " and I hope that what he says is 
 true." 
 
 Taking the note out and reading it to him 
 I asked : 
 
 "Will that do, Neal?" 
 
 A grin overspread his features and he took
 
 78 THE BECKONING OF THE WAND 
 
 a greasy piece of newspaper from his pocket and 
 wrapped the missive in it. " Thank y'r honor," 
 he said, " thank y'r honor kindly. If that doesn't 
 fix the job for me, may I be shot." 
 
 The interview was drawing to a close, but 
 instead of departing he came a step nearer. 
 
 " If it's any little idea of a wild duck, or a 
 few trout y'r ladyship would be wantin' without 
 a word to any person, Neal Cornealy is the man 
 to get them, private like." 
 
 Oh, keepers ! Oh, water bailiffs ! Oh, policemen ! 
 
 I was expecting another visitor that morning 
 for I had both seen and heard Honor Gilchreest 
 at Mass, and her appearance in the chapel usually 
 meant that we should find her seated on the 
 doorstep waiting for a cup of tea when our own 
 breakfast was over. Her chosen place in the 
 chapel was in front of the High Altar, and here, 
 with two snuff boxes resting on the bench before 
 her, she prayed heartily and aloud. One box 
 contained the snuff which was her chief comfort
 
 THE BECKONING OF THE WAND 79 
 
 and only luxury, the other was the receptacle 
 of her well worn rosary beads. I had seen her 
 that morning, her round rosy cheeks shining as 
 usual under the frilled border of her white cap, 
 but when soon after Neal Cornealy's departure 
 I was told that she wanted to see me, I found 
 her pale, and almost dishevelled. 
 
 " Why, Honor, what is the matter ? " I asked 
 in surprise. 
 
 "I've a buzzy-wuzzy in me heart, daughter," 
 she murmured, sinking on to the stone step at 
 my feet, "and a squeezin' an' a bilious-like." 
 
 " But what ails you, Honor ? Did you get 
 weak in the chapel, or what?" 
 
 "Not a weak, then," she replied, and the 
 recital of her woes was already cheering her. 
 " But coming along the road there, what came 
 after me but one of them mwheelin coaches wid 
 the devil's own cry out of it, an' I'm not the 
 better of the fright of it since." 
 
 The hoot of a motor had reached me faintly
 
 80 THE BECKONING OF THE WAND 
 
 as I was returning from Mass, and, sympathetic 
 as I tried to be, 1 could not repress a smile at 
 such a delightfully original description. Mwheel, 
 or mael, means bald or bare, you know. The 
 old Irish hornless cow is a mwheelin because 
 she is small and bare of horns, so is it also 
 applied to a motor, which is lower than a 
 carriage and bare of horses in front. A very 
 strong cup of tea did much to restore Mrs 
 Gilchreest's serenity, and then came the usual 
 request for a pair of boots. 
 
 " But, Honor, I gave you a pair just before 
 I went away, what has become of them ? " 
 
 " I wouldn't deceive your honor, so it's the 
 truth I will be tellin'. Didn't the unders go 
 from me, and there's nothing left of the uppers 
 savin' the button-holes." 
 
 And after that I don't think it was pauperis- 
 ing to look her out another pair. I had 
 certainly got as much as I gave ! 
 
 A woman a little over middle age was my
 
 THE BECKONING OF THE WAND 81 
 
 next visitor. She was a comparative stranger 
 to the place, only having come into the parish 
 some months previously as the second wife of 
 an old army pensioner " a hardy, decent girl " 
 (of fifty-five at least) so the neighbours described 
 her " and a comfortable wife for any man, barring 
 her being bothered." Bothered she certainly was, 
 if almost stone deafness can be so called, and it 
 was this that now was troubling her. 
 
 " The neighbours do be talkin' of your honor's 
 charity, an' I wouldn't be troublin' you only I'd 
 be ashamed to go to the priest meself, an' me 
 not hearin' what he'd be sayin', but if your 
 ladyship would be speakin' for me there's not 
 a night or morning but what I'd be prayin' for 
 you. Now, would you ask his reverence could 
 he free me from me marriage vows, any ways at 
 all, for I was always an easy good-natured girl, 
 an' I couldn't bear to be quarrellin' with any 
 person, an' himself does get terrible rough often 
 when I don't be hearin' what he says ? "
 
 82 THE BECKONING OF THE WAND 
 
 The recollection of a conversation with 
 " himself s " first partner came back vividly to 
 my mind. She had come for a " rub for her 
 husband's rheumatism," and begged that it might 
 be a strong one. " For Michael was in the 
 horse - soldiers," she said, " an' to hear the 
 language that he uses to those old bones of his, 
 well, it is surprising ; 'tis raging like a mad dog 
 he is, and I'd as soon have a Mahomet in the 
 house any day, as himself, when the pains is 
 on him. I'm not the better of listening to him 
 for a week." 
 
 After many nods and gesticulations of sympathy 
 I managed to din into the poor dulled ears that 
 her best comfort was, that if she could hear what 
 he said she would probably want to be released 
 much more than she did in her deafness, and 
 either this new view of the case afforded her 
 consolation or the telling of her woes had 
 lightened their burden, for she departed apparently 
 much cheered by her visit.
 
 THE BECKONING OF THE WAND 83 
 
 A man had been waiting some time for his 
 turn at the window. He was young, not more 
 than twenty-five, perhaps even less, and I won- 
 dered as I watched his shamefaced amble up the 
 avenue what his business could be. 
 
 "'Twas me brother John's wife that bid me 
 come to y'r honor," he mumbled, and from 
 the awkward way in which he twirled his hat, 
 shifted from one foot to the other, and turned 
 a dull red under the tan of his skin whilst his 
 eyes kept roving over my head to the blank 
 wall of the house above me, I guessed that 
 here was another matrimonial difficulty. 
 
 "Well," I asked, "what can I do for you?" 
 Then to help him on I made use of guess- 
 work. " Did I hear something about your getting 
 settled ? " 
 
 A flicker of surprise passed over the im- 
 passive countenance. 
 
 "Your ladyship has it," he answered, "and 
 maybe you heard she died on me ? "
 
 84 THE BECKONING OF THE WAND 
 
 "The girl died! But how dreadful! Who 
 was she, and when did it happen ? " 
 
 " Last week, me lady, and only the day before 
 the wedding. Your ladyship knew her well," with 
 increased embarrassment and confusion, " but she 
 was not so to say a girl. 'Twas with the Widow 
 Malone they'd made up a match for me." 
 
 "What! Old Biddy Malone of Carrauroe ! 
 Why, she was sixty-five at least ! " 
 
 " Oh, she wasn't that, me lady, a fine woman 
 not much over fifty, and anyways, if it had been 
 the will of God that she should die I wouldn't 
 say a word, but it wasn't the will of God, but 
 just her own contrariness, not minding herself 
 the Lord have mercy on her soul. 'Twas last 
 Sunday night was a fortnight the match was 
 made, and I was for getting it fixed up on the 
 minute, for Mr Brown was only waiting for the 
 marriage to make the place over on me, and the 
 potatoes waiting to be set. But herself wouldn't 
 set a foot in the chapel till the roof was mended
 
 THE BECKONING OF THE WAND 85 
 
 beyond, though she hadn't the money to buy the 
 straw. So I gave her two pound me brother 
 John paid me the five that Anne brought him 
 when they married and she was to have every- 
 thing ready for me o' Tuesday. Friday, howsome- 
 dever, the little lad from Farrelly's came to our 
 house and said Biddy was bad and had had the 
 priest, so we went over, John and meself, and 
 wasn't the creature dead there under the fine new 
 roof my money had paid for. And now those 
 spalpeens of nephews of Biddy Malone's have 
 got the whole place, and they've money enough 
 to pay the rent of the five acres, and they took 
 off every live beast, down to the little lucky 
 bantam hen, fearing I'd be after them for my 
 two pounds. I spoke civil like to young Andy 
 about it, but what did he do but made a mock 
 of me ; and Mr Brown says I've no case for the 
 law, for 'twas a present I gave to my intended 
 wife, the Lord have mercy on her. But Anne 
 said if you'd speak to the agent for me, me lady,
 
 86 THE BECKONING OF THE WAND 
 
 he'd see for to get me compensated. There's 
 another girl beyond the town, with two acres 
 and a bog garden, but she won't take me with- 
 out the money." 
 
 It was a hard case, but I promised to do what 
 I could, and Bartle Coffey departed apparently 
 satisfied. 
 
 And so my morning had sped. My visitors 
 had not been specially edifying that day, but 
 don't you think, Joan, that they made the day 
 at all events more interesting than the empty 
 hours you complain of. Your loving 
 
 PATRICIA.
 
 VII 
 
 MY DEAR JOAN, You ask me if there is a 
 county town in Ireland that has no poorhouse. 
 I fear not, and there are towns, too, which cannot 
 boast their county court-house which yet have 
 their grim grey Union buildings. 
 
 They are all alike, these dreary, sombre piles, 
 some large, some smaller, but all laid out on the 
 same plan. Some are well kept, some are not. 
 All are forbidding, saddening, depressing, yes, and 
 irritating too, by the very fact of their existence, 
 as well as by the mismanagement that regulates, 
 or rather fails to regulate, them. 
 
 I am afraid I must say that I agree with all 
 you say against the workhouse system in general, 
 
 but here again, within those grey walls, sur- 
 
 87
 
 88 THE BECKONING OF THE WAND 
 
 rounded by outward tokens of suffering and of 
 sin, I have known some beautiful souls souls 
 that when released must have gone very soon 
 to see God's glory. 
 
 There was a girl who lay for months in a 
 corner bed of one of the wards in Ballynaraggit 
 Union Infirmary. Her faith was naive, almost 
 childish, yet it was from it that she gained the 
 strength to face death bravely, even gladly. 
 
 She had been born in the workhouse and had 
 gone out as a farm servant, only to come in again 
 to die a lingering death from consumption. One 
 day I could not pay her my usual visit, and so 
 I sent to Ellen a picture that I had for her, a 
 softly coloured reproduction of one of Raphael's 
 Madonnas. 
 
 She was holding it in her hand when next 
 I saw her and her eyes sought mine eagerly, 
 anxiously. 
 
 " I want to ask you," she said, "I've wanted 
 to asked you this long time, but I was afraid.
 
 THE BECKONING OF THE WAND 89 
 
 Then you sent me this" the picture "an' I 
 took it as a sign that it was you as could tell 
 me. When I quit the school below Sister gave 
 me a picture of the Blessed Mother of God. It 
 was straight she was in it, an' white, an' a blue 
 sash on her. But in the house beyond where I 
 was hired the dog went an' ate it on me. I was 
 terrible lonesome after it, so I was. 'Twas in 
 the dairy mostly I'd be, an' a fine airy place 
 it was, with the milk o' ten cows in it, an' the 
 walls as white as paper. An' I kep' thinkin' if 
 I'd the likeness of the Mother o' God, wouldn't 
 1 have the best of company in it. So what did 
 I do but take a stick from the fire, an' on the 
 wall I drew her figure. There was red raddle 
 for the hair, an' I rubbed the blue-bag on the 
 sash an' on the cloak. Oh, it wasn't a pretty 
 picture " she looked lovingly at Raphael's master- 
 piece " for, you know, the likes o' me can't draw 
 pictures ! Still, it put me in mind of her. But 
 now, when I'm soon to see the glory of God, it
 
 90 THE BECKONING OF THE WAND 
 
 comes to me that I didn't ought to have drawn 
 her an' left her there on a dairy wall. 1 wouldn't 
 have done it for no disrespect, miss, only I was 
 lonesome without her, an' I didn't know any 
 better that time. Do you think, now, she sent 
 me this likeness as a good sign or no ? " 
 
 I told her I was sure Our Lady had taken 
 her picture as no disrespect, but, as it had been 
 drawn, so it was seen in heaven. 
 
 " Didn't you pray to her oftener when you 
 had the picture, Ellen ? " I asked. 
 
 " Indeed, then, an' I did that ! Every time 
 I saw her I'd ask her to pray for me. An' the 
 boys bringin' in the milk would say, ' So you've 
 the Mother of God with you, Nellie.' And 
 they'd raise their caps to her. Oh, miss, dear, 
 my mind's made easy now to die, for I wouldn't 
 like to go before the throne of God Almighty 
 with any disrespect on me to the Mother of His 
 Son." 
 
 She raised my picture to her lips and kissed
 
 THE BECKONING OF THE WAND 91 
 
 it, and so I left her. Later, when she died, they 
 laid my little Raphael under her folded hands. 
 It was almost her only belonging. 
 
 The cronies round the fire, talking together, 
 chose usually more mundane topics of conversa- 
 tion, and sometimes their remarks were very 
 amusing. One day that I was there the advent 
 of a new doctor was filling their minds. 
 
 " Have you seen him, miss ? " asked one, and 
 without waiting for an answer she went on : 
 " Isn't he the gay little fellow ? In he comes 
 wid the big coat of him buttoned up under his 
 chin the prettiest little chap ! " 
 
 "Well, then, I'd not give much for the likes 
 of him ! " returned another. " Why, I could just 
 take him up in me two hands for all the world 
 like a twopenny doll ! Give me the old man, 
 God bless him, a fine stout fellow, seventeen 
 stone weight, and every button on him doing 
 its duty." 
 
 There was one missing that day from amongst
 
 92 THE BECKONING OF THE WAND 
 
 the group, a sad - eyed girl with a sad story. 
 My query as to her whereabouts was quickly 
 answered. 
 
 " Didn't you hear her man had come home to 
 her ? Glory be to God ! 'Twas the fine sight to 
 see the two of them crying like children when 
 he came in. The fever it was that had him 
 taken, away over in England, and he lying 
 beyond queer in the head them weeks and weeks, 
 an' she thinkin' him dead an' buried no less." 
 
 It was on Christmas Day that young Mrs 
 Mahaffy had been taken to the workhouse 
 infirmary, and a few days later I heard her story. 
 Mere boy and girl, she and her husband had 
 married on nothing. A cabin on the bog was 
 their home ; the produce of half an acre of 
 garden, and whatever he could earn, their income. 
 At harvest time he, with the neighbours, had 
 gone off to England, leaving his young wife 
 alone. October came, bringing back the others, 
 but of Bartle Mahaffy there were no tidings.
 
 THE BECKONING OF THE WAND 93 
 
 He had not worked with any of the men from 
 the district, and none could tell where he had 
 gone. December succeeded November, still 
 Bartle never came. The little hoard of potatoes 
 had given out ; the meal bag was empty. The 
 few hens had ceased laying, and their mistress, 
 worn out with anxiety, and more than half- 
 starved, fell ill. 
 
 " I was heartsick with waiting," she told me. 
 " For I knew if Bartle left me lonely for the 
 Chris-e-mas, 'twas dead and gone he was from 
 me for ever. And just as I thought to get to 
 the chapel, of Chris-e-mas Eve, I took a weakness, 
 and never a stir was there out of me. An' after 
 that a great storm came, and the old beams over 
 me was shakin', an' the wind rose in under the 
 thatch, and, looking up, over the bed, 'twas 
 God's sky, an' no roof I had. An' the senses 
 seemed to go from me, an' I kep' calling to 
 Bartle, callin' to him an' beggin' God Almighty 
 to take me to him. An' my throat got parched,
 
 94 THE BECKONING OF THE WAND 
 
 an' I, who was shiverin' all the week past, was 
 burniri like a fire. An' I prayed to Jesus Christ, 
 who came on earth that night for us, to send 
 me some one to give me a drink. I thought 
 maybe He could spare one angel, for I knew 
 no man or woman would face the bog road in 
 such a storm. An' as I prayed I saw a flock 
 o' white doves comin' out o' the sky. They fell 
 on my face an' on my hands, an' on the lips of 
 me that was burnin', an' they was the softest, 
 coolest things in life. God Almighty had heard 
 my prayer, had heard an' answered it." 
 
 Yes, God Almighty had answered her prayer. 
 He had laid His hands in softest, coolest touch 
 upon her, and allayed her burning thirst. For 
 what is softer and cooler than God's beautiful snow ? 
 On Christmas morning the neighbours, going 
 to Mass, had seen the cottage almost roofless from 
 the storm, and under the snow they had found 
 young Mrs MahafFy sleeping as peacefully as a 
 child.
 
 THE BECKONING OF THE WAND 95 
 
 There had been many days of pain and weak- 
 ness afterwards, during which I had visited her 
 in the grey house, but at last joy as well as 
 health had come back to her Bartle had returned. 
 The cabin on the bog was roofed again by kindly 
 neighbours, and the little home that had been 
 overshaded by tragedy for so many months saw 
 happiness once more. 
 
 It was on the day that I heard of Bartle 
 Mahaffy's return that, on my way out, I met 
 one of the few able-bodied pauper women. She 
 was the lowest of types degraded, repulsive. It 
 was an absolute impossibility to her to keep from 
 drink, and her intemperate habits had ruined her 
 little home, and brought her to her present plight, 
 making her, even still, obdurate to the nuns' per- 
 suasions of reform. 
 
 " Has your honor been in the school ? " she 
 asked me. 
 
 " Not to-day, Mrs Fogarty," I answered ; " but 
 I saw your boys there at Christmas,"
 
 96 THE BECKONING OF THE WAND 
 
 "Pat is after makin' his First Communion, 
 miss," she said proudly. 
 
 I knew the nuns had hoped that that day 
 would have seen the mother reconciled to God ; 
 but there had been so many broken promises on 
 the subject, that my faith in Mrs Fogarty was 
 weak. 
 
 "Were you with him at the altar?" I asked. 
 
 She half turned from me, twisting her blue- 
 check apron in her ringers. 
 
 "I I didn't get for to go," she muttered. 
 Then brightened a little. " But says I to Patsey, 
 ' Don't you stop to talk nor to chat with any 
 person, but come straight to your mother, for 
 the first kiss of your lips, after you receive the 
 Son of God, must be for her.' And he came." 
 
 An unknown something lighted up those poor, 
 debased eyes. All her face was working, and as 
 she moved away from me, I heard her murmur : 
 
 "Oh, the innocent lips of him the innocent, 
 blessed lips ! "
 
 THE BECKONING OF THE WAND 97 
 
 And, in spite of all, there was the leaven. 
 That act, those words, showed the faith that 
 gives hope. 
 
 The men's ward is empty to me now, but 
 time was when my greatest friend in the grey 
 house lay there. 
 
 Steenie was born in the workhouse a puny, 
 sickly baby, who cost his mother her life, yet 
 lived himself through all the rough handling, the 
 careless kindness that falls to an infant pauper's 
 lot. The nuns had come to the Union by the 
 time that Steenie had arrived at school-going age, 
 and with them, for a few years, he received the 
 only tenderness that his young life ever knew. 
 At twelve years old his comrades were hired out 
 to farmers in the district, but no one wanted so 
 sickly a boy as Steenie, and for three years longer 
 he remained under the influence of the nuns. 
 Then, humanly speaking, came the great day in 
 the boy's life. Some one, kind and rich, proposed 
 to send half a dozen lads to Canada, and start 
 
 G
 
 98 
 
 them in life there. Steenie was among the 
 chosen band ; but perhaps those who have never 
 known the lot of a workhouse child hardly realise 
 all that such a project meant to him. A home 
 for the boys were to be adopted by those to 
 whom they were sent a place on the great 
 ladder of possibilities : a clean wash-out of the 
 poorhouse stain. 
 
 There was one week of perfect happiness and 
 pleasure, lived in the anticipation of the future, 
 in Steenie's life. 
 
 Then came the day of departure. But where 
 was Steenie ? Not amongst the band of emigrants, 
 not in his old place in the workhouse school, but 
 across the yard, in the grim, solitary building that 
 stands half empty, yet ever needed from year's 
 end to year's end. Unconscious of all around 
 him, Steenie lay at death's door, struck down 
 by smallpox, in the fever hospital. But the dark 
 portals beyond, that opened for those who fain 
 would have stayed without, were closed to him.
 
 THE BECKONING OF THEW * ^ 
 
 ST- JOStPH'S 
 
 The fever passed, leaving himvvworn-otttvnbwt 
 conscious ; and at once his mind rev^rfod tfy 1 ^,^ ^ 
 rosy future prospects that before his illnes^hScT 
 enthralled him. Then as he lay, too weak to 
 move, with head and eyes still tightly bound, 
 Sister Mary went to him. 
 
 How she told him, I know not ; what she said, 
 when she broke to him that the life he longed for 
 was never to be his, that the small-pox demon had 
 spared his life only to take his sight, to leave 
 him blind. 
 
 If, in the first moment of agony and despair 
 he murmured against his fate no one knows, for 
 to the Sister those were sacred moments. 
 
 " Yes, it was I who told him," she said to me. 
 ** Steenie is more than a hero, he is a saint." 
 
 It was after this that I learnt to know him. 
 Sitting by the fire, he was always resigned, always 
 interested in what he was told. Seemingly he 
 was even happy, sitting there, saying the rosary, 
 and keeping the peace. The other men were
 
 100 THE BECKONING OF THE WAND 
 
 good to him in their own rough way. His right 
 to the warmest corner, to the least uncomfortable 
 chair, was never questioned. But after a time he 
 claimed these privileges less often. He caught 
 cold and had not strength to throw off the cough 
 that shook and exhausted him. He knew now 
 that death was drawing near again, and I think 
 he must have welcomed its coming. When at 
 last the end was at hand it was a new priest 
 who came to attend him, one who had heard his 
 story, but who was a stranger to Steenie. 
 
 " It was such a pitiful story," he told me after- 
 wards, "a life of such unrelieved gloom, that it 
 seemed impossible for any one to look upon it 
 as a great gift of God's kindness. With these 
 thoughts God forgive me for them in my mind 
 I approached that bedside, where I learned a 
 lesson I can never possibly forget. You know, 
 my poor lad,' I began awkwardly enough, 'you 
 know that God is going soon to take you to 
 Himself, and and you must try to love Him.'
 
 THE BECKONING OF THE WAND 101 
 
 The sightless eyes were turned on me, and 
 I hesitated as I thought of the past. But I 
 needed to say no more. Surprise and reproach 
 were mingled in the answer that reached me 
 faintly : ' Love Him ! ' Steenie said, ' why wouldn't 
 I love Him ? Didn't He die for me ? '" 
 
 He never spoke again. They left him in 
 peace after he had received the Holy Viaticum. 
 And half an hour later the Sister drew the sheet 
 reverently over his face. Blind Steenie was dead. 
 
 These, dear Joan, are some of the lights which 
 lighten the otherwise overpowering shadows of 
 workhouse life. Your loving 
 
 PATRICIA.
 
 VIII 
 
 MY DEAR JOAN, You wonder that I do not 
 claim to having a miracle to tell you about. A 
 miracle ! well, perhaps not a miracle, but I can 
 tell you of the faith of which miracles are the 
 crown. 
 
 I did not often see Honor Guinty, for she 
 lived so far away, not in the parish of Bally- 
 naraggit at all, but away beyond Dereen. 
 
 In the good old days when such things 
 were, her father had been our great grand- 
 mother's postillion, otherwise we should hardly 
 have known of her existence, for her cottage 
 stands quite beyond the circle of our usual 
 rounds. For the sake of old lang syne she was 
 
 on our Christmas list, and if any of us passed 
 
 102
 
 THE BECKONING OF THE WAND 103 
 
 her way, we sometimes stopped to speak to her, 
 but it was only a few years ago that my acquaint- 
 ance with her ripened into friendship. Her story 
 came to me in scraps, but, put together, I think 
 you will agree that there is "leaven" in it. 
 
 When first I remember her, and for long 
 after, she had a little old brother living with her. 
 He was half crippled, the youngest, weakest, and 
 last of a band of boys. It was when he died that 
 I first heard something of Honor's past. 
 
 I was paying her a visit of condolence, and, 
 sitting in the kitchen of her tiny two-roomed 
 dwelling, she told me of the others, of Brian, and 
 Christie, and Mosheen, fine men all, who had gone 
 away and died years ago in America. 
 
 " Had you no sister ? " I asked in all innocence, 
 and it was only a look, come and gone in an 
 instant, on the old face, that showed me I had 
 unwittingly touched an unfortunate topic. 
 
 " I had, then, daughter, " she answered, and 
 then stopped abruptly. Her thoughts had so
 
 104- THE BECKONING OF THE WAND 
 
 evidently flown back to the time, long years ago, 
 when she and the unmentioned sister had been 
 girls together, where to-day she sat a lonely old 
 woman, that I said no more. 
 
 " I had, then," she repeated, after a moment's 
 silence, "an' she the prettiest girl from this to 
 
 Ballynaraggit. God I thought fancied 
 
 perhaps that there was a moment's hesitation, and 
 I somehow expected the formula, beautiful in itself, 
 but sometimes used mechanically, " God forgive 
 her," but instead came the prayer, heartfelt and 
 earnest, " God bless her." And my curiosity was 
 aroused. I suppose I showed it in my face, for 
 of her own accord Honor went on : " It was 
 your grandmother herself, may God give glory to 
 her soul, that could have told you of Catty 
 Guinty, for there was great talk of her 'twixt 
 this and the town the onct, an' this day I'd dare 
 to say there's not one in the parish remembering 
 her name, barrin' meself. 
 
 " This place was too dull for a pretty one like
 
 THE BECKONING OF THE WAND 105 
 
 herself, an' she went away to service, but your 
 grandfather, God be good to him, brought home 
 a soldier servant to the town, and and him and 
 me was for getting married. Maybe he wasn't 
 much of a chap, only the world never held another 
 for me, only him. 
 
 "Then Catty came home, for the boys were 
 in it that time, and with me gone there'd have 
 been sorra' one to keep house, and 'twas she 
 that was the gay gartlaher and me but a homely 
 piece and so she and Tom went off and got 
 married one morning. The neighbours had the 
 talk of the world about it. They thought, 
 God help them, to cheer me wid saying this thing 
 and that, an' me with a hurt within me that 
 no pity could heal, without it was the pity of 
 Christ." 
 
 " And did you, could you forgive him ? " 1 
 asked. Her plain bald statement brought it all 
 before me far better than any flowery explanation 
 could have done.
 
 106 THE BECKONING OF THE WAND 
 
 " Daughter, I loved him." 
 
 I was young then, and the implied reproach 
 was lost upon me. 
 
 " And her ? " I persisted tactlessly. 
 
 " Forgive her ! " she repeated. " Wasn't it 
 God's will, asthore? And isn't it the grand 
 thought entirely that the cross of Christ Himself 
 was less weighty for the trouble He put on me ? " 
 
 Then she told me that when he married, the 
 run - away bridegroom had given up my grand- 
 father's service, and for all the long, long years 
 that had passed since then, nothing had been 
 heard of him and of his wife. Honor did not 
 even know if they were alive or dead, and so, she 
 told me, she said " God bless them," for that was 
 what would serve them best either here or 
 hereafter. 
 
 A long winter passed before I saw Honor 
 again, and one spring day, riding past her lane 
 end my heart smote me, at first slightly, for my 
 neglect, but when I turned down the bye-way,
 
 THE BECKONING OF THE WAND 107 
 
 meaning to rectify my omission, with a pang of 
 real regret. Before me, blocking up the narrow 
 pass in front of the cottage, T saw the poor man's 
 van, that peculiar, dreaded vehicle which since 
 the evil day that workhouses were started in 
 Ireland had carried unwilling, and too often, 
 unclean paupers to the hated grey house that 
 stands on the outskirts of Ballynaraggit. At once 
 I concluded that poor old Honor was going to 
 spend her last days in the Union, and knowing 
 how unwelcome any witness to her departure 
 would be, I turned my back on the black box, 
 with its ancient horse and still more ancient 
 driver, who clung ape-like to his tiny seat upon 
 the roof, and retraced my steps to the high-way, 
 reproaching myself bitterly as I went for having 
 done nothing since Christmas for my old friend. 
 A week later at Ballynaraggit workhouse I found 
 out my mistake. I asked for Honor. She was 
 not there. I asked the reason of the van's visit 
 to her house, and learnt that it had taken a
 
 108 THE BECKONING OF THE WAND 
 
 .passenger from, not to, the Union. Catty had 
 come back. Not the selfish beauty of long ago, 
 but an old, crippled, fretful woman. 
 
 I think Honor's surmise must have been right. 
 The soldier cannot have been "much of a chap," 
 anyhow the end of Catty's life in England was 
 the poorhouse, and thence she had been sent back 
 to her native Union. Had I not believed in 
 Honor's forgiveness of the past, it would have 
 been proved to me now many times over, in the 
 way she took her sister home, and tended her. 
 For, although Catty was some years the younger, 
 she looked and seemed much older than Honor. 
 Her life had evidently been the hardest, after 
 all ; and now, when Honor was still able to keep 
 her little house going, Catty could only sit by 
 the fire and grumble. 
 
 And that she did. Poor old soul, I suppose it 
 is always harder to be forgiven than to forgive. 
 
 Several years went by, and the two old sisters 
 lived on together, then after one winter Honor
 
 THE BECKONING OF THE WAND 109 
 
 was again left alone. Catty can never have been 
 a cheerful companion, but Honor had borne with 
 her, and now that she was gone she missed her 
 sadly. 
 
 The two extra shillings that no longer came 
 in outdoor relief were a loss, even with a mouth 
 less to feed, and when I saw Honor in the spring- 
 time, she was praying hard that God would send 
 some one who would keep her company in her 
 old age, and help her to dig the little garden, 
 or cut the turf from the bank against which the 
 house was almost built, according to the season. 
 
 She never doubted but that in God's good 
 time her prayers would be heard and answered, 
 but neither she as she spoke, nor I as I listened, 
 was aware that something had already happened, 
 which, miracle or no miracle, was destined to bring 
 about what she prayed for. 
 
 Her house, as you know, is made principally of 
 mud, floor and walls alike, although there are stones 
 here and there to strengthen the latter. The
 
 110 THE BECKONING OF THE WAND 
 
 kitchen gets a little light from the ever open door, 
 but the inner room depends on a piece of glass 
 some twelve inches square, and fixed immovably, 
 for all its lighting. Honor, I am sure, swept and 
 dusted her house occasionally, for outwardly all 
 was as clean as circumstances allowed, but it was 
 really no wonder that a little green plant should 
 sprout up in one corner, and grow there unseen 
 until its topmost leaves reached the table. 
 
 On this table the only furniture except a 
 bed and a box that the room contains stands a 
 statue of the Blessed Virgin. Once it was a 
 white figure of Our Lady of Lourdes, now it is 
 smoke-grimed to brown in spite of the protecting 
 veil of net that always hangs over it. Two very 
 hideous vases stand beside the statue, and there 
 are holy pictures, once of gaudy colouring, but 
 dingy now, hanging in frames against the mud 
 wall. This is Honor's altar, and here, after Catty's 
 death, when she was alone, and too feeble to walk 
 the four long miles to Mass at Dereen Chapel,
 
 THE BECKONING OF THE WAND 111 
 
 she spent most of her leisure moments. I never 
 remember seeing flowers in the vases, so probably 
 Honor did not think much of decorations, but 
 when of its own accord, a pretty green plant grew 
 up out of the mud floor, or rather from a crack 
 between the wall and the ground, and spread 
 itself out at Our Lady's feet, she left it there, 
 and even took a certain pride in its growth. 
 
 At the feet of the statue the single stalk 
 divided into five parts, but these, having nothing 
 to support them, twined together, growing up 
 behind the statue, until they rested on the veiled 
 head of Our Lady's figure. I saw it there. The 
 stalks were hard and fibrous, the principal one 
 seemed to be of woody growth, but the leaves 
 were soft and very green, with tiny prickles round 
 the indented edges, that showed the thistly nature 
 of the plant. 
 
 Whether consciously or unconsciously Honor 
 had helped the direction of its growth, I cannot 
 say. I can only tell you what I saw myself. The
 
 112 THE BECKONING OF THE WAND 
 
 foot-square window let in its little share of sun- 
 shine exactly opposite the altar, and yet the plant 
 grew behind the statue and away from the light. 
 
 I saw it in May, and as the days passed by 
 it began to be whispered around that there was 
 something miraculous in its growth. How the 
 report arose I do not know, but the neighbours 
 first, and then people from a distance, began to 
 visit Honor, and some amongst them, after pray- 
 ing before the statue, asked permission to light 
 a candle and leave it behind them, a silent 
 prayer that flickered upwards, and surely reached 
 to Heaven at last. 
 
 The little room, close and airless at the best 
 of times, grew unbearably hot in June and July 
 when these candles increased in number, and 
 the plant, showing perhaps its ordinary nature, 
 began to droop, and the leaves shrivelled up and 
 dropped off. 
 
 Honor's prayer for company had indeed been 
 answered, and although it was not in the way
 
 THE BECKONING OF THE WAND 113 
 
 that she had intended, still many, nay most of 
 her visitors, left her something in the shape of 
 money, which, all put together, made a little 
 nest egg that would help to feed a permanent 
 companion, if such a one presented herself. 
 
 I did not go to Dereen during the summer 
 months. Honor now had little need for visits, 
 but I heard in August that a sixth stalk had 
 made its appearance, this one growing in front 
 of the statue and reaching to Our Lady's hands. 
 
 Then came the part that to me seemed 
 nearest to a miracle. 
 
 The plant, common weed of natural growth 
 though it may have been, was to Honor in 
 all sincerity a Heaven - sent companion and 
 messenger, and the prayers that she and many 
 others sent up to God before that little altar 
 were heartfelt and true. But of the numbers who 
 came to see it some were urged by curiosity 
 alone, and as the popularity of the plant in- 
 creased, so too did the takings of the publican
 
 114 THE BECKONING OF THE WAND 
 
 at the cross roads, a lonely spot where ' bona 
 fide travellers ' could refresh themselves undis- 
 turbed on Sunday afternoons. 
 
 The priest at Dereen spoke more than once 
 of the abuse of what might have been a good 
 thing, but even if his own parishioners heeded 
 his words, those who transgressed came, for the 
 most part, from places beyond his influence. 
 
 I do not know how he did it. I do not 
 know if he regretted having to hurt the poor 
 old woman so sadly. I only know that, words 
 having no effect, he was obliged to have 
 recourse to deeds. 
 
 He went to the cottage, pulled up the plant, 
 and, green leaves and brown stalks, burnt it on 
 Honor's hearth with the turf-sods she had laid 
 down to cook her potato-dinner. 
 
 If she had thought only, or even most, of the 
 money it brought her, she could not have borne 
 the loss of her plant as she did. 
 
 "God sent it, daughter," she told me, "and
 
 THE BECKONING OF THE WAND 115 
 
 His own priest took it from me. Sure, I couldn't 
 have a surer sign but that He'd done His will 
 with it." 
 
 And, going home, I thought to myself that 
 whatever the plant may have been, here was 
 faith that in these days of carelessness came 
 little if at all short of a miracle. I have not 
 heard of Honor's death, so I suppose that she is 
 still living. The last time I saw her she had 
 found a companion, " a lone dissolute (desolate !) 
 woman like meself," she said, and the little hoard, 
 brought to her by her much loved plant, had 
 been enough up to that to supplement their 
 weekly pittance. All they need is a small sum in 
 hand twice a year, once for potato-setting, once 
 for turf-cutting, and as long as the priest whose 
 duty made him burn the thistle is in the parish, 
 I know that Honor will never go without those 
 sums. Your loving 
 
 PATRICIA.
 
 IX 
 
 MY DEAR JOAN, Although I must and do admit 
 that as a nation we are less truthful than the 
 English, I most emphatically deny that this 
 unpardonable and maddening failing arises from 
 any innate national depravity. The force of 
 circumstance began it, and habit has now, 
 unfortunately, grown to be second nature. 
 
 Do you remember that for six centuries 
 that is for some eighteen generations our only 
 means often of saving our lives, always of saving 
 our belongings, was either in word or in act to 
 lie? It would, of course, have been far nobler 
 to sacrifice life and property to truth, and 
 many of our forefathers did so for the sake 
 of religious truth, but human nature is weak,
 
 THE BECKONING OF THE WAND 117 
 
 and we succumbed to the temptation of saving 
 ourselves by falsehoods. Now we are reaping 
 the punishment of our weakness by having 
 to submit to the stigma on our national name, 
 and not being believed when we do speak the 
 truth. 
 
 Don't think that I am a champion of false- 
 hood, but I wonder sometimes when I look on 
 the impassive countenances of the Georges and 
 the 'Arries, who crawl along the country roads 
 in parts of England, seated on their heavy farm 
 carts behind their heavy farm horses, if they 
 were able to turn their thoughts from beer, and 
 think of an untruth quickly enough for it to~ 
 be of any use to them, whether English love of 
 truth or human love of gain would be the 
 stronger. Seriously, however, I own that the 
 love of truth for which England is famous does 
 not yet exist in Ireland ; but, remember, it is 
 only sixty-eight years since we were given 
 Catholic Emancipation, and we can only hope
 
 118 THE BECKONING OF THE WAND 
 
 that in the course of five centuries more, the 
 truth that has been forced out of us will return. 
 As yet I fear the value of truth is not 
 appreciated. Only lately a man was asked why 
 he told such lies, and he answered quite openly, 
 " Isn't it hard enough for the likes of us to live 
 an' we lying ? Where would we be at all if we 
 told the truth ? " I own, however, that besides 
 the political inducement to lying, which is now 
 no more, we have two characteristics which 
 impede our reform in this direction. 
 
 One is the dislike, unless roused to anger, 
 that the average Irishman has of saying an 
 unpleasant thing, and the other is the vivid 
 imagination with which so many of us are 
 gifted or should I say afflicted ? 
 
 I am not speaking of the educated classes, 
 of the writers and song makers, but of the 
 uneducated, of those who, maybe cannot even 
 read or write. I do not know whether their 
 perception of the unseen in religious matters is
 
 THE BECKONING OF THE WAND 119 
 
 
 the cause or the effect of this imagination, but I 
 
 think that one must have to say to the other. 
 You know old Maureen Costello the woman 
 who enquired after your incubator as "the box 
 where you make chickens by machinery with the 
 help of God." You would never think that 
 she was endowed with a vivid imagination, but 
 she is. 
 
 She told me perhaps it is not true, for alas ! 
 I have come to be sceptical as to much that 
 I hear she told me that no one else had ever 
 heard this story, which illustrates what I mean 
 better than any words of mine could do, 
 although I fear I can give but a feeble render- 
 ing of her most graphic narrative. 
 
 I had taken refuge from a storm one day 
 in her cottage, and seated on two creepy stools 
 before the glowing turf that burnt upon the 
 hearth, we began to talk of her neighbours, the 
 Lees, and I think as she spoke she almost 
 forgot that I was there.
 
 120 THE BECKONING OF THE WAND 
 
 " They were kind neighbours to me always, 
 were the Lees," she said ; " kind ever to the 
 lone old woman who never had man or child 
 of her own. And the reason for that same 
 God knows and Mark Lee never another. 
 But Mary was good to me too, and I don't 
 begrudge her what her money got her. She's 
 had him these twenty years and more, but I 
 know well 'twas never Mark's heart that chose 
 her. Maybe that's why I can love the boy 
 that's her's and his. 
 
 " I never had but the one secret all me life 
 long, now I have another, an' I'll keep it too, God 
 willing, for it's no manner of use to go talking of 
 such things, only I thank God that He let me 
 do it. 
 
 " The rain was drivin' over the bog, just as it 
 is to-day, but 'twas night-time, an' the wind howled 
 on the face of the hill. There was no light in the 
 room here but the glow of the turf, an' all at once 
 that was dimmed with the cloud o' grey ashes that
 
 THE BECKONING OF THE WAND 121 
 
 swirled up from the hearth. ' Lord save you, 
 whoever you are, and out of such a night,' says I. 
 ' Close the door, you omadhawn, unless you want 
 to send me clean and clever up the chimney.' 
 
 " Then when the ashes fell I saw it was Dan 
 Lee I had, the lad from over the way. 
 
 " ' Well, Dan,' says I, ' and what's brought you 
 out this night?' 
 
 "'May I sit by the fire, Maureen?' says he. 
 ' I'm off to America in the morning.' 
 
 " I never heard that voice on him before, but 
 many's the time I told Mark, aye, and Mary too, 
 that they were too hard on the lad, and he their 
 only one, and now, be token, they'd learnt it for 
 themselves. 
 
 " ' That's sudden,' says I, quiet-like, for I seen 
 that 'twas more nor talkin' that would be needed 
 to check him now. ' An' why isn't it beyond 
 you are, the last night maybe ever you'll see 
 the old folk?' 
 
 " ' I've broke with them, and that's the truth,'
 
 122 THE BECKONING OF THE WAND 
 
 he lets out. ' You may quit your talkin', for I've 
 me mind made up. I'm goin' to America, an' 
 you'll waste your time if you go chatting to me, 
 Maureen. You'd do better to be sayin' your 
 prayers,' an' he took up the prayer-book that 
 lay on the ledge of the hearth and commenced 
 turning over the pages. 
 
 " ' Is it reading this you be at night ? ' he 
 says, showing that 'twas not of himself he was 
 going to speak. And humouring him, God gave 
 me the great thought. 
 
 "'Times I do,' says I, 'and more times 'tis 
 in the fire I do be reading.' 
 
 "Lord forgive me that same, though true 
 enough, many's the picture I've watched fallin' 
 to ashes in the red o' the turf. 
 
 " It caught his fancy. Well I guessed it would, 
 an' he asked me to read what I saw there then. 
 
 " ' You must pass your word,' says I, ' that 
 you'll not speak till I'm done, that you'll hear 
 me to the end.'
 
 THE BECKONING OF THE WAND 123 
 
 " ' Ah, then,' says he, I'll listen.' 
 
 " ' On your faith,' says I. 
 
 " ' Ay,' says he. 
 
 " * I see a big city,' says I, ' with folk hurryin' 
 up an' down, an' all busy wid their own concerns. 
 I see a lad walkin' amongst them. He is alone. 
 No one cares what he is about, or what comes 
 to him. There are miles and miles of streets in 
 the city, an' more folk live in it than you nor me 
 have ver seen ; yet there's not a soul to bid the 
 lad the time o' day, or to care if he's cold or ill, 
 if he's starving or dying. 
 
 "'Now I see some folk beginnin' to look at 
 him, but they all have bad faces, wicked bad 
 faces. The good folk pass him by, because there 
 are little devils sittin' on his shoulders, an' they 
 drive everybody from him that hasn't got other 
 devils on their shoulders too. There's the devil 
 of disobedience has a seat close to the collar of 
 the lad's coat, and near by is the devil of dis- 
 respect to parents.'
 
 124 THE BECKONING OF THE WAND 
 
 " I saw Dan look up as if he was going to 
 speak, and I minded him of his promise. 
 
 " * There's obstination, too,' says I, ' and ill- 
 temper, and pride, and others quite at home, 
 and they keep calling to their friends on the 
 other folks backs. Drunkenness and idleness, and 
 gambling, stealing, and all badness come round 
 the lad ; but when honest men look at him, his 
 devils pull him away from them. I see this 
 goin' on, only the coat where the devils is sittin' 
 is growing shabbier. It's wearin' into holes, but 
 there is so many devils on it now that I can't 
 say is it the same coat at all or not. But now 
 the figure of the lad is fading, and I see nothing 
 but the flames, burnin', burnin' all before them, 
 except the little devils, an' them dancin' for joy 
 in the heart of them, for haven't they got more 
 fuel for the fire of heU ? ' 
 
 " I looked up at Dan, but his head was down 
 on his breast, and never a bit of his face could 
 I see.
 
 THE BECKONING OF THE WAND 125 
 
 " ' Here's another picture,' says I, and I stirs 
 the turf, 'it's in another country, it's nearer 
 home. I see a house, a lonely house. There's 
 not a one* in it but an old woman, with white 
 hair on her and a sad, patient face. It is a poor 
 place, want and misery show out upon its walls. 
 A cup of black tea stands on the hearth, there 
 is no milk, for the cow was sold long ago. A 
 crust of bread is on the table, but the old 
 woman only looks at it with hungry eyes ; it is 
 the last thing to eat left in the house, and 
 maybe some one is coming who will want it more 
 than she. After a while an old man comes in, 
 he is bowed and bent and terrible thin. He 
 eats the bit of bread and drinks down the black 
 tea. I see him lay his hand on the old woman's 
 shoulder and speak to her, and oh, the sad 
 sight ! the tears are falling down his cheeks. I 
 see a gombeen man come in, he pokes around 
 and tosses the bits of furniture about ; they are 
 poor things in his eyes, but they are the old
 
 126 THE BECKONING OF THE WAND 
 
 mother's treasures. I see the old father and 
 mother alone again in the bare kitchen, but far 
 away in the distance, I see the poor man's van 
 coming to carry them off to the Unibn. I see 
 them look around to choose what little thing they 
 can take away with them to the miserable place 
 they are going to. The old woman goes to a 
 cupboard and takes out a bundle of clothes. 
 Her own? The old man's? No, just the outfit 
 of a gossoon before they put him into suits. 
 There is a pair of socks amongst them, a pair 
 of baby's socks. The old man is lookin' over 
 her shoulder, an' his face is drawn an' grey. 
 She lays one sock in the hand that he puts 
 out to her. Is the boy that used to wear 
 that sock dead an' gone ? Surely he must 
 be, or his parents would never be in such 
 straits. 
 
 " ' The sound of wheels is heard outside, and 
 the old father slips the baby sock into the 
 breast of his poor coat. Oh ! I can almost hear
 
 THE BECKONING OF THE WAND 127 
 
 the words he mutters, " God forgive me, me 
 share in what is past." 
 
 " * But the other sock ? It is in the mother's 
 keepin'. It is pressed to her lips. It is wet 
 with her tears. Their home is taken from them. 
 They have lived in poverty and hardship. They 
 are too old to work, and they are alone. Every- 
 thing is gone from them, everything only the 
 two baby socks that were worn long ago by 
 the son who has deserted them. 
 
 " * The sound of wheels comes nearer. Trem- 
 bling, heart-broken, shoulder to shoulder, with 
 the baby socks restin' on their hearts, they 
 totter across the threshold ' 
 
 " But then young Dan would hear no more. 
 ' No no, no,' an' I saw the hot tears drop 
 down upon his knees, * Never that, never that, 
 God forgive me.' 
 
 "The storm was past. There was no rain 
 now, an' the moon came in through the window 
 an' fell across the floor. He'd forgotten me,
 
 128 THE BECKONING OF THE WAND 
 
 had Dan, but, thank God, he'd forgotten his plan 
 for travellin' too. 
 
 " * You'll get home before they've shut up for 
 the night, Dan,' says I. 
 
 "'I will, Maureen, God helpin' me,' says he. 
 
 " I watched him till he was swallowed up in 
 the shadow of his own house beyont. But you'll 
 hold your whist on what I'm after tellin' you, 
 daughter, for no one knows why he went back 
 to them, no one, only God an' him an' me, a 
 
 lone old woman." 
 
 PATRICIA.
 
 MY DEAR JOAN, I cannot undertake to answer 
 your question as to where faith ends and 
 superstition begins, but one thing I can say is, 
 that if you had ever visited the Holy Island 
 in Lough Derg you would - not speak of the 
 superstition attached to the performance of the 
 pilgrimage. 
 
 The anxiety that each- exercise should be 
 carried out exactly as custom prescribes may 
 be petty, it may be prompted by a superstitious 
 fear, yet I think that the Paters, Aves, and 
 Credos that rise from the hearts as well as from 
 the lips of those who fidget over the exact spot 
 on which to kneel whilst saying these prayers, 
 are, nevertheless, pleasing to God. 
 
 129 I
 
 130 THE BECKONING OF THE WAND 
 
 You know, of course, that Saint Patrick him- 
 self started the pilgrimage. He went to the 
 island on Lough Derg to pray in solitude, and 
 whilst there he saw a vision of Purgatory so 
 awful that for nine days and nine nights he 
 stayed praying and fasting so as to avert such 
 suffering from himself. Here, too, following their 
 master's example, came his disciples. Thus came 
 Saint Bridget and Saint Brendan, Saint Columba 
 and Saint Malachi, Saint Dabhroc and Saint 
 Catherine. How many others came in those 
 old days of fervent Christianity even tradition 
 does not pretend to relate, but that those I 
 have named to you performed the pilgrimage 
 is testified to by the six crosses that have been 
 put up in their names and walled round with 
 rough stones, and that still mark the "beds" or 
 resting-places of these saints. 
 
 For fifteen centuries thousands and thousands 
 of pilgrims have, bareheaded and barefooted, 
 followed St Patrick's example. In the last fifty
 
 THE BECKONING OF THE WAND 131 
 
 years a careful record proves that from one to 
 three thousand people have visited the island 
 annually. There is Papal authority as well 
 as this undoubted precedent for undertaking the 
 pilgrimage, and if some amongst the thousands 
 who do it are superstitious, I think it may be 
 forgiven them in consideration of the real 
 prayers and real penances that they perform. 
 For ten weeks every summer the two churches 
 poor little damp-stained buildings and the 
 equally bare and almost equally damp hospice, 
 large enough to hold over a hundred people, 
 are open to the public. No one may stay on 
 the island unless he is willing to carry out the 
 regulations of the pilgrimage, but to suit the 
 rapidity and perhaps the constitutions of to-day, 
 the time of penance has been lessened to three 
 days and two nights only. 
 
 The routine of these days varies but little. 
 There is Mass at five in the morning and a 
 sermon. Imagine eighty or ninety people, all
 
 132 THE BECKONING OF THE WAND 
 
 barefooted, and with a larger percentage of men 
 than of women, in a small, low, cruciform chapel, 
 where there are benches for about twenty, the 
 others kneeling upon the mud floor with faces 
 upturned to the altar, no one appearing at his 
 or her best in the chill grey of sunbreak, and 
 some who have spent the whole night in the 
 chapel, looking quite the reverse of attractive. 
 But no one cares. The world, for most of the 
 pilgrims during those three days, is just that 
 island, their own soul, and God. And those who 
 feel differently are ashamed. 
 
 After the second Mass, said in the other 
 chapel, which later in the day is given up to 
 hearing confessions, the "rounds" begin. These 
 consist of a visit to the Blessed Sacrament, a 
 renewal of baptismal promises, and a number of 
 Paters, Aves, Glorias, and Credos, some of which 
 are recited whilst walking round the church and 
 round the six crosses that dot the island, others 
 whilst kneeling or standing in prescribed places.
 
 THE BECKONING OF THE WAND 133 
 
 All this, you remember, is done barefooted, 
 and the island is neither smooth nor grassy. 
 Consequently one " round " takes an hour and 
 a half to perform, and nine rounds constitute 
 that part of the pilgrimage. At mid-day public 
 prayers are said and there is another sermon, 
 or rather instruction. At six Benediction is 
 given, and at nine every one makes the stations 
 of the cross, and says night prayers in the 
 chapel. 
 
 The penances are, first and easiest, dispensing 
 with any kind of footgear or headgear for three 
 days. Second, eating only once a day, at about 
 one o'clock, as much oatcake washed down by 
 lake water or black tea, as possible. Thirdly, 
 spending one of the two nights in the chapel, 
 praying if you can, and if not, doing your best 
 to keep awake, and follow the prayers that your 
 more pious companions say unceasingly, and 
 mostly aloud, from ten in the evening until five 
 in the morning.
 
 134 THE BECKONING OF THE WAND 
 
 On the third day you go home, footsore, very 
 hungry, but quite uninjured by three days of such 
 fasting as elsewhere would be utterly impossible. 
 
 And you never speak again of the superstition 
 of Saint Patrick's Purgatory. 
 
 Driving from Pettigo to Lough Derg we 
 shared our car with a fellow pilgrim, a cattle- 
 dealer, who immediately took us under his 
 protection, and in the boat, after securing the 
 best seats for us, began to tell us various 
 things about the pilgrimage. As we knew most 
 of them before, our attention strayed away to an 
 old woman, who, seated in the bows, was sobbing 
 quietly under her shawl. 
 
 " You're looking at that one," our protector 
 observed. " She's in trouble, the creature, but 
 it's to the right place she's goin' to get shut of 
 it. Is it what's on her you're askin' ? God 
 Almighty knows. Sure, haven't we all our 
 troubles ? Amn't I after losing a fine cow 
 meself, ere yesterday (the day before yesterday) ? "
 
 THE BECKONING OF THE WAND 135 
 
 In duty bound we enquired the deceased 
 animal's complaint. 
 
 " Not a sickness was there on her," was the 
 reply. " I couldn't say what took her, was it 
 solid contrariness or the will o' God." 
 
 Another boat was overtaking us, and, catching 
 sight of one of its occupants, our companion passed 
 to a different subject. 
 
 " There's Dan Casey ! " he ejaculated, " and 
 the young wife of him, no less. Well, now, 
 be this and be that, it's himself has horrid 
 taste." 
 
 Mrs Casey, evidently a newly-made bride, 
 might have been somewhat hurt at such out- 
 spoken criticism had she not known that the 
 adjective " horrid " is the English rendering of 
 a Gaelic word meaning superlatively fine or 
 wonderful. If you ever go out night-fishing 
 with Andy Rooney, when the stars are bright, 
 ask him his opinion of the sky, and, if I mistake 
 not, he will bare his head and say, " Praises
 
 136 THE BECKONING OF THE WAND 
 
 be! and isn't it the works of God that's 
 horrid?" 
 
 But if Mr Casey's taste had been horrid in 
 its Gaelic meaning, it struck us that the word 
 might have been applied in its English sense 
 to the taste of his bride. He was a big man, 
 red-headed, with scant red beard, and a prominent 
 nose that once had been scarlet, but that had 
 now faded to the hue of a dying cabbage rose. 
 
 " D'you see Dan Casey, there ? " our talkative 
 friend went on. " Before ever he began coming 
 to the Purgatory there wasn't a better - looking 
 blackguard from Enniskillen to the town of 
 Clones than himself." (Anglice : No one in that 
 country looked to be a better, or rather greater 
 blackguard than he.) " You may have heard of 
 
 the row in " he mentioned a case that had 
 
 excited some newspaper comment a few years 
 ago. " Well, Casey was in it, hand and neck, 
 an' when he got out, off he comes to the island, 
 and on his two knees before the prior, he takes
 
 THE BECKONING OF THE WAND 137 
 
 the pledge for life, and many another promise. 
 And he kept them too, God help him, and he 
 got the business together again. Then last 
 month he fetched home that lassie, out of 
 Tintona, and I'm proud to see the two of them 
 in the holy place, where God Almighty gave 
 him strength to break with the drink." 
 
 We asked how often the speaker himself had 
 made the Purgatory. 
 
 " Seven - and - twenty years, I'm coming," he 
 said simply, " and me father before me, and the 
 lads at home, please God, they'll be coming 
 when I get back." 
 
 In the grey light of early morning we saw 
 all our fellow pilgrims gathered together. There 
 were about fifty men, none looking very poor, 
 some quite well - to - do. The women were 
 more mixed, a few young ones who might have 
 been school teachers, or shop assistants ; some 
 real " voteens " of a type well known to all 
 Irish churchgoers ; some prosperous middle-
 
 138 THE BECKONING OF THE WAND 
 
 aged matrons, as well as a few poor old women, 
 to whom bare feet were no novelty, and a meal 
 of oatcake no unwonted hardship. But to all, 
 these three days' prayer, in spite of the penances, 
 come as a yearly rest, and I think it gives them 
 strength to struggle on through the hardships of 
 their lives for another twelve months. 
 
 The men looked much more peculiar than 
 the women, with their tidy clothes and bare 
 feet, and though the faces of several proclaimed 
 that, like Mr Casey, they came to the island to 
 ask God's help to take or keep the pledge, there 
 were many others whose motives for coming 
 were not to be guessed so easily. 
 
 Our friend of the boat, in an interval between 
 two stations, presented one young man to us as 
 " coming as far as you ladies do yourselves, all the 
 way from Dublin." He was quite young, and 
 might have been a shop-keeper or a Christian 
 brother in secular clothes. We spoke to him in 
 the low tone in which all conversation on the
 
 THE BECKONING OF THE WAND 139 
 
 island is carried on for fear of disturbing those who 
 were praying, and very simply he told us his story. 
 
 As a boy he had wished to be a priest, a friar, 
 but whilst he was still at a Seraphic school, his 
 father died, leaving a number of children. They 
 would have kept him at the Friary, and people 
 proposed to send some of the younger ones to 
 an orphanage, but his uncle offered him work 
 in his public-house with a salary that would allow 
 his mother to keep his family undivided. 
 
 " It was then I came here first," he said, " to 
 find out God's will, and though it nearly broke 
 my heart to give up the schooling, I felt it was 
 to my uncle that I must go. I come back every 
 summer, and I thank God for the work He sends 
 me to do for Him. There's plenty to be done for 
 Him in a public-house as well as in a church, and 
 maybe I serve Him better behind a spirit bar than 
 ever I would have served Him in a pulpit." 
 
 Two of the women also spoke to us. One 
 was she who had been weeping in the boat.
 
 140 THE BECKONING OF THE WAND 
 
 " May you never know sorrow, acushla," she said 
 as I helped her from her knees on the lake shore ; 
 and then, being questioned, she told us the reason 
 of her tears. For seventeen years she and her 
 " man " had made the pilgrimage to the island 
 together, but in the winter she had buried him, away 
 over the hills, and for the first time now she came 
 alone to the island. I muttered something about 
 being lonely, but she, misunderstanding, turned 
 almost angrily upon me. " Lonely is it ? Why 
 would he be lonely ? " she cried. " Isn't it to 
 the poor man's Best Friend he's gone ? " 
 
 The other old woman also had her trouble, 
 and her story was pathetic. She came from the 
 coast where there are periodic epidemics of fever. 
 One day the child of a neighbour, "a widow 
 woman like meself," died, and there was no one 
 to dig the grave. "Not one at all, till my 
 Mickeen went to do it, and the mother was that 
 distracted that it was my boy's two hands that 
 laid little Katie in the coffin that he'd made for
 
 THE BECKONING OF THE WAND 141 
 
 her. Then he came home to me, and death was 
 written between his two eyes. 
 
 " ' Granny,' says he, ' I've loved you better nor 
 me own head and I've got to go from you.' And 
 he cried God bless him for the best boy in 
 Ireland he cried because he was leaving his old 
 granny, and he not four-and-twenty years of age. 
 Twas a week and no more, the day for the day, 
 that he buried little Katie, when they carried him 
 out himself, on the sticks. You can fancy the 
 fine boy he was, daughter, when 'twas seven feet 
 planks they had to put to his coffin." 
 
 There was no repining. It was God's will 
 that in her old age Mickeen's grandmother should 
 be " thrown on the rates." If Saint Patrick's 
 Purgatory is superstitution, then this is either 
 apathy or philosophy ; but if one is faith, so I 
 think is the other, or rather is it the resignation 
 that comes from faith. 
 
 After leaving the island we made a tour through 
 the highlands of Donegal. If the reforms suggested
 
 142 THE BECKONING OF THE WAND 
 
 by the authoress of the American letters to hotel- 
 keepers and others were carried out, that tour 
 would certainly have been more comfortable. 
 Still it did console us a little to remember that 
 if the domestic economy of other nations is more 
 perfect than our own, we, and no others, have 
 the faith that keeps alive the pilgrimage of Saint 
 Patrick's Purgatory. 
 What do you think ? 
 
 Your loving 
 
 PATRICIA.
 
 XI 
 
 MY DEAR JOAN, - - I quite agree with you 
 that it is disgraceful for a strong, able-bodied 
 woman like Maria Hegarty to beg. And she is 
 an inveterate, hopeless beggar, as her mother, and 
 probably her grandmother, were before her. She 
 is altogether unattractive too, and yet she is not 
 wholely bad. Once, years ago, when Maria was 
 only a girl, she agreed to try and work, and so 
 we sent her to the Sisters of Charity's Laundry, 
 but, as you may imagine, her sojourn there was 
 of short duration. I must tell you the story of 
 her last day in the convent, as the Sisters told 
 it to us, for it upholds my theory that she is 
 not altogether bad. 
 
 Sister Mary, tall and stately in her grey 
 143
 
 144 THE BECKONING OF THE WAND 
 
 gown and white cornette, stood at the table in 
 the packing -room of the laundry, holding an 
 empty picture frame in her hand. 
 
 " Where is the picture belonging to this 
 frame ? " she asked in a clear, cold voice. 
 
 Her audience was not one that heeded. No 
 reply came from the group of wild-looking young 
 women, who paused in their occupation of sorting 
 the clothes to listen to her question. 
 
 " Girls, I am speaking to you all, and I 
 expect an answer. I ask again where is the 
 picture ? " 
 
 A voice, half muffled yet with a defiant ring 
 in it, came from amongst the workers : 
 
 "In the fire." 
 
 There was no surprise apparent in the Sister 
 of Charity's even tones. 
 
 "Who threw it there?" 
 
 Again the same voice came in reply : 
 
 " I did." 
 
 Sister Mary let her glance wander slowly
 
 THE BECKONING OF THE WAND 145 
 
 from face to face before she looked directly at 
 the culprit. Strangely enough, there was more 
 shame to be seen on the other countenances 
 than on that. 
 
 " Maria Hegarty, you can wait for me at the 
 passage door after time-bell this evening." 
 
 No more was said, and in silence work was 
 resumed. 
 
 The mistress had shown no curiosity, no 
 astonishment nor even anger, when speaking to 
 the girls, but in her heart she was greatly puzzled 
 over the occurrence. 
 
 The girls, though their faults were legion, 
 had never shown any disrespect to the statues 
 or pictures that were to be found in each room, 
 and this outbreak was apparently quite unaccount- 
 able. Maria Hegarty had only been a few weeks 
 at the convent, and, so far, she had seemed to be 
 fairly contented. The nuns, however, felt that 
 they were making little or no impression upon 
 her, and evidently her wild, wilful temperament
 
 146 THE BECKONING OF THE WAND 
 
 was already chafing under the unaccustomed 
 discipline. 
 
 When the time-bell rang the other girls filed 
 out, but Maria, in obedience to the Sister's in- 
 junction, waited under the big clock in the 
 passage to explain her conduct. 
 
 "Well, Maria," said the nun seriously and 
 gently, "I want you to tell me why you threw 
 the holy picture in the fire." 
 
 Shamefaced now, the girl stood silent with 
 drooping head. 
 
 "We asked no questions when you came to 
 us, Maria, but I can guess that in your life there 
 has been some one you loved dearly, your mother, 
 perhaps, or your father, or a little brother or 
 sister, or some one who was kind to you when 
 you were a child yourself. I think by your face 
 it was your mother whom you loved the best. 
 Well, what would you say if a person came and 
 threw your mother's picture with words perhaps 
 of contempt into the fire, or tore it to bits and
 
 THE BECKONING OF THE WAND 147 
 
 scattered it through the mud of the streets ? 
 That is what you have done to my mother, and 
 she is your mother too, my poor child, although 
 you know her and her Divine Son so little. 
 Now, Maria, what am I to say to you ? Will 
 you tell me what made you do it? You see 
 I know something about it already." 
 
 " They've split on me, then," said Maria 
 sullenly, " and more'n likely they've lied to you, 
 too. I'm bad, real bad, but not so bad as them, 
 for they go shamming an' I don't. I'd beat 
 the lot o' them at language out on the roads, 
 but what they say when you're gone's not fit for 
 her" nodding towards another picture of Our 
 Lady that hung upon the wall of the corridor 
 " and her Little One to hear. They're better in 
 the fire than listening to such things, and when 
 the others wouldn't quit their talk, I took an' 
 chucked her in. You can keep the coppers you 
 owe me to buy a new one. I'm off." And before 
 the nun had recovered from her surprise there was
 
 148 THE BECKONING OF THE WAND 
 
 a whisk in the passage, a slam of the work door, 
 and Sister Mary had seen the last of Maria Hegarty. 
 She made her way home after that. We 
 heard of her return, although it was a long 
 time before we saw her again. Her mother 
 used to come and beg as regularly as before, 
 but Maria avoided explanations by a continued 
 absence. We saw her when her mother came to 
 die. She had sent for us, poor old soul, and we 
 went to see herein the wretched cabin she called 
 home. Four bare mud walls, a tumbling roof, 
 puddles in the mud floor where the rain came 
 through the thatch, and no furniture but a few 
 old wooden boxes. Two bacon cases nailed 
 together and half filled with rags did duty for 
 a bed, the other boxes represented table and 
 chairs. The old woman was blind, or nearly so, 
 and death was very near, but when she heard 
 our voices she called to Maria to dust one of 
 the boxes and to spread on it the clean white 
 cloth that had lain under her hands when, that
 
 0P 
 
 " ""/> 
 
 THE BECKONING OF THE/WAND 149 
 
 V 
 
 morning, the priest had brought \her c the last 
 Sacraments. It was the only clean 
 
 f 
 
 house, and we must sit upon it. 
 
 Then she asked us to be kind to Maria, to 
 continue to her the weekly dole that the old 
 woman looked upon as her right. We urged 
 that, late as it was, the time was not yet passed 
 when Maria might earn an honest livelihood for 
 herself instead of remaining a beggar for ever. 
 
 " She couldn't do it, the creature ! She 
 couldn't live now without the free air of the 
 roads about her," at last the old woman con- 
 fessed to the attraction of a wandering life. 
 " But don't be too hard on her, asthore, for 
 didn't I breed and rear her to it, God forgive me." 
 
 Less urgently, we asked if she did not fear 
 the dangers to Maria soul if left alone to lead a 
 beggar's life. 
 
 " Is it with me feet already before the Gates of 
 Heaven you'd ask me to disbelieve His mercy?" 
 she cried, almost scandalised at such a suggestion.
 
 150 THE BECKONING OF THE WAND 
 
 "Don't I know that God Almighty won't leave 
 go what His Son bought for Him so dear." 
 
 And so Maria succeeded to her mother's 
 "beat," and became a recognised institution, who 
 claimed her share of our mid -day meal with 
 unfailing regularity once a week. 
 
 She is now what the people call a "charity 
 woman," asking and receiving in God's name. 
 Of a different type is Mrs Lee, who came, I 
 remember, one day when Maria was having her 
 dinner on the doorstep. Mrs Lee belongs to the 
 common tramp tribe in local parlance, she is a 
 tinker. Being a tinker in our part of the world 
 does not necessarily imply any connection with 
 the tinsmith's profession. It simply means a 
 member of a family who travel the roads in a 
 donkey cart, camping on the roadsides, asking 
 alms as a right, and oftener than not appropriating 
 what is refused them. Sometimes the tinkers do 
 sell, make, and mend pots and pans, and so forth. 
 Occasionally they parade a knife-grinding machine
 
 THE BECKONING OF THE WAND 151 
 
 or a few broken umbrellas. Often they "job in 
 asses," coming up from further west with half a 
 dozen miserable donkeys, which they sell or 
 exchange, making a little on each deal. And 
 not infrequently an animal grazing on the roads 
 is hustled along with the Westerners and sold to 
 some one miles away, before its legal owner is 
 even aware of his loss. Tinkers, therefore, are not 
 popular people, and I told Mrs Lee coldly that 
 there was nothing for her unless she cared for 
 a piece of bread an offer which I knew, in 
 summer at least, was sure to be refused. But 
 to-day she did not heed my words, and as I 
 spoke I saw that her eyes such beautiful, black- 
 fringed eyes of grey were red and swollen from 
 weeping. 
 
 Last time she came she had told us proudly 
 that she always took the children into the Union 
 at Christmas, so that they should get the treat 
 we intended for the children resident there ; 
 to-day her news referred to one of these children,
 
 152 THE BECKONING OF THE WAND 
 
 whose only chance of a Christmas treat was in 
 the workhouse. 
 
 One of her little girls was dead. I no longer 
 had a single friend in all the tinker tribe, for 
 little Lizzie Lee was dead. Her mother had 
 neglected her. To our way of thinking, she had 
 often and often been cruel to her, yet in her own 
 rough way she had loved the child. 
 
 Coming out of the country jail after one of 
 her frequent visits there, she had found Lizzie 
 dying yes, and glad to die in the workhouse 
 infirmary. 
 
 Morally and physically there was nothing of 
 the " tinker " in the child. It was from her mother 
 that she got the delicately-cut features blurred 
 now in the elder woman and the strangely 
 pathetic eyes that singled her out from amongst 
 her more coarsely made brothers and sisters. But 
 whence came the moral delicacy that made her 
 shrink with loathing from her wretched drunken 
 surroundings no one could imagine.
 
 THE BECKONING OF THE WAND 153 
 
 Fortunately for her, her people were so often 
 in the lock-up, that much of her life had been 
 spent under the care of the nuns in the workhouse 
 school. It was here that we first made friends, 
 Lizzie and I, and when December came round 
 we sent her a doll only a rag - filled nigger, 
 dressed in gaudy cretonne the one single gift 
 that Christmas had ever brought her. 
 
 Soon after we went to see her, but her place 
 was empty in the schoolroom, and, crossing the 
 damp, grey yard, we entered one of the infirmary 
 wards. There, on one pillow we saw two heads. 
 One face was white, and now so wee and wan 
 that at first we hardly recognised our little friend ; 
 the other was black, inanimate, hideous, yet worn 
 with kisses, the face of the nigger doll. 
 
 Sister had given Lizzie her present on Christmas 
 morning, and at dinner-time she had found the 
 child lying with her " baby " in her arms, and 
 her meal a degree less unappetising than usual 
 workhouse fare untasted before her.
 
 154 THE BECKONING OF THE WAND 
 
 " Put away that doll, Lizzie, and eat your 
 dinner, like a good child," she was admonished. 
 
 But the doll was only clasped the closer. 
 
 " I don't want me dinner, Sister, I don't 
 want no dinner, not any more," the child said. 
 
 " No dinner, but you'll die if you eat no 
 dinner," said the nun. 
 
 Lizzie looked up at her with wide innocent, 
 eyes. 
 
 " I want to die," she said. 
 
 And further questionings brought her reasons 
 to light. Her sister, who had come in presumably 
 for the Christmas treat, had been up to see her, 
 and had told her as a cheering piece of news that 
 " our folk's time would soon be up in jail," and 
 that they would come before long and take them 
 all out to the old life of want, cold, hunger, and 
 beatings, and yet of freedom, and therefore loved. 
 
 " I couldn't go travelling again, Sister," Lizzie 
 explained ; " you know what they're like, them 
 folk " that is her grandfather, father, and mother
 
 THE BECKONING OF THE WAND 155 
 
 "and I couldn't take the child out to them," 
 hugging the nigger closer still. " But you told 
 me that Jesus is kind to little children, so I'll 
 die an' go to Heaven, and I'll bring the child 
 along with me, and Jesus will be good to us." 
 
 That was some months ago, and now she had 
 had her wish. She has never gone out on the 
 tramp again. Jesus, who is kind to little children 
 had taken her to Himself, and from the wretched 
 mother's lips we learnt that the child's last desire 
 was for the doll to be buried with her. The 
 Sisters told us afterwards that they had done as 
 Lizzie asked. The black doll was laid beside her, 
 and has crumbled to dust in a little pauper grave. 
 
 Good-bye, dear Joan, 
 
 PATRICIA.
 
 XII 
 
 MY DEAR JOAN, I have again looked through 
 your vade-mecum, the American letters, and at 
 every fresh truth that I find in its pages my 
 hopes of rousing your toleration grow weaker. 
 There is not a fault of commission or omission 
 described by the authoress that might not have 
 been drawn from life, from one, two, half a 
 dozen of my acquaintances. But to me the dual 
 nature of the Celt is such easy reading that I 
 
 still repeat 
 
 " A piteous land, 
 Yet ever beckoning with enchanted wand." 
 
 Piteous ! at times almost hopeless yet more than 
 beckoning, drawing forcibly as a magnet, with her 
 enchanted wand. 
 
 I understand that you cannot feel this curious 
 156
 
 THE BECKONING OF THE WAND 157 
 
 fascination. It is as subtle as the distinction 
 between our virtues and our failings. It is one of 
 the invisible things that are stronger than steel, 
 yet being unseen are inexplicable. At times we 
 ourselves lose sight of it, but such little things, 
 that by many pass unnoticed, serve to bring it 
 back. Do you remember the day, soon after you 
 went to live at Ballynaraggit that we took shelter 
 from a storm at Martin Concannon's ? He bade 
 the farm girl fetch chairs for us from the inner 
 room, bade her dust and set them near the fire, 
 and, speaking first to me, he gave me greeting. 
 
 " Your honor is heartily welcome," he said. 
 
 It was your turn next. 
 
 " Ma'am, your husband's wife is welcome." 
 
 But to the stranger who was with us : 
 
 " Miss, take a seat." 
 
 Perhaps you did not notice ; it was all so 
 courteously done, but to me those delicate grades 
 of welcome brought the glamour before my 
 eyes that made me lenient to the muddy ducks
 
 158 THE BECKONING OF THE WAND 
 
 waddling across the kitchen floor, to the heap of 
 turnips that ought to have been cleaned and 
 chopped outside, even to the all pervading smell 
 of cabbage rising insistently from the great black 
 pot upon the fire. 
 
 I understand that besides disliking your 
 surroundings for what they are, you dislike them 
 still more because of what they are not. The 
 greyness, the dampness, the rank growth in 
 summer all revolt your orderly soul, you yearn 
 for the warm red soil, the picturesque villages, 
 for the very things that overcome me when I am 
 in England, and make me long for a glimpse of 
 human nature as seen round Ballynaraggit. I 
 understand how you miss the beautiful little 
 Gothic church, so spotlessly kept, with vestments, 
 services and all so correctly carried out. In it 
 one feels, when the vibrations of the organ send 
 the incense down in clouds from amongst the 
 carvings of the roof and a hush of reverence is 
 it mingled with respectability ? hangs over the
 
 159 
 
 congregation, that one really is in church. I do 
 not think you will ever feel at home in the bare 
 barn-like chapel at Ballynaraggit, where the floor 
 bears traces of Sunday's mud from Monday until 
 Friday, where the sunlight straggles in through 
 coloured glass that sets one's teeth on edge to look 
 at, where the smell of damp turf smoke pervades 
 the air ; and the want of a High Mass, the ill-sung 
 Benediction, is not made up to you by the real 
 eloquence of the sermons. Yet do you never 
 feel when your own efforts at praying are very 
 feeble if ever they are ! that there is comfort in 
 the heartfelt devotion that some of the congrega- 
 tion round you feel, and do not keep to themselves ? 
 Does Mary " the monk " still crouch in her old 
 place beside the confessional and pour forth in a 
 mixture of Gaelic and English her litanies of praise 
 and prayer ? 
 
 I have knelt and listened to her, marvelling 
 at the fervent flow, but best of all I like the prayer, 
 extempore yet stereotyped from weekly repetition,
 
 160 THE BECKONING OF THE WAND 
 
 with which, Sunday after Sunday, she concludes 
 her devotions. 
 
 " Oh Sacred Heart of me Jesus, hear me, 
 " Oh Sacred Heart of me Jesus, help me, 
 " Oh Sacred Heart of me Jesus, smite me, 
 strike me, heal me, 
 
 " Oh Sacred Heart of me Jesus, grant me 
 never to pass out of the world without th' 
 assistance of me holy clergy." 
 
 Do you know, Joan, that the more I think of 
 you the more I pity you. Fate has obliged you 
 to make your home in Ireland, and you would 
 like to be in sympathy with your surroundings, 
 but that seems to be impossible. Faults and 
 failings are apparent everywhere around you. As 
 French people say, " Elles vous sautent aux yeux," 
 and where are the virtues, the attractions that 
 might counterbalance some of them ? I do not 
 wonder that in Eastern Ireland, at least, they are 
 invisible to so many. That they do exist I 
 maintain, in spite of all, but a cloak of the
 
 THE BECKONING OF THE WAND 161 
 
 commonest English gentility, made doubly offensive 
 by the ignorance it seeks to hide, or the more 
 aggressive mantle of American independence, often 
 covers them effectually from the casual observer's 
 eye, and it needs some special occasion to bring 
 them to light, even to those who know of their 
 existence. 
 
 In the west - - in Donegal, Connemara, and 
 Kerry thank God, they are less far to seek, but 
 even there you find them hard to recognise 
 unless they are pointed out to you. 
 
 I do not blame you in the least. If fate had 
 treated me as it has treated you, if I had been 
 obliged to make my home in a country not my 
 own, I too should have looked upon it as a mis- 
 fortune, although, had I been exiled to England, 
 I should at least have been able to enjoy, in an 
 intensified form, in a more personal way than I 
 now do, the proud feeling of belonging to the 
 greatest country in the world. 
 
 But you ! You have lost this, and have gained
 
 162 THE BECKONING OF THE WAND 
 
 nothing in return. " Ireland a nation " is to you 
 a rebellious cry, given voice to only by the 
 vulgar and unruly. I own that in a Dublin 
 drawing-room, or in a pasture field of Meath, 
 the Ireland of the poet is an imaginary thing ; 
 but can you never feel, putting the people quite 
 aside, that in our stony Connemara wilds, "the 
 little black rose," "the dark rosaleen" is a real, 
 living motherland ? 
 
 As to the people, I hope what I have told 
 you of them may help to make you a little more 
 lenient ; and before I end I want to tell you 
 one thing more. Do you remember the Murphy 
 family, who were, and are, the despair of priest, 
 
 and nuns, and landlord at ? They are the 
 
 only Irish family in the whole of that picturesque 
 Gloucestershire village, and goodness knows how 
 they got there. He is hopelessly idle, frequently 
 unsober. The children there must be a dozen 
 of them, I think are the quickest in the class- 
 room, the most unruly and untidy out of it. They
 
 THE BECKONING OF THE WAND 163 
 
 come to Mass regularly, wholly unabashed in their 
 rags ; and on Sunday afternoons their mother, with 
 a perennial baby in her arms and two or three 
 infants clinging to her skirts, may be seen paying 
 a visit to the otherwise empty chapel that lovely 
 little Gothic chapel that you love. The father 
 refuses to work regularly, to pay his rent at all. 
 Mrs Murphy declines to keep her house in order 
 or her children clean, and yet the clergyman's wife 
 an honest woman, although no lover either of 
 the Irish or of Catholicity says openly that, with 
 all her faults, Mrs Murphy is the only spiritual- 
 minded woman in the whole district. 
 
 So it is that in unexpected places appears the 
 leaven. 
 
 If it were not there at all, less would be 
 expected of us. If our standard were lower we 
 should fail less in this world, but should we rise 
 as high I speak as a nation, as a whole in the 
 next. 
 
 I wonder if you know the context of the
 
 164 THE BECKONING OF THE WAND 
 
 lines I am so fond of quoting. They were 
 written after reading a history of Ireland, and 
 although they apply more to Ireland political 
 than to Ireland domestic, and the seventh line 
 is true from a materialistic point only, they have 
 the feeling in them that I have been trying to 
 show to you, and therefore, though perhaps I 
 am presumptuous in so doing, I add them here 
 as an envoi to my letters. 
 
 " Shut up the book. A piteous land, 
 Yet ever beckoning with enchanted wand, 
 Whether by fault or fate 
 Where all things come too soon or are too late, 
 Of fitful love and inextinguishable hate. 
 
 " Unhappy, though beloved beyond the sea, 
 Thy children prosper furthest from thy knee. 
 Vainly at home they spend, and oh ! that it should be, 
 In barren battle and debate 
 The wit, the humour and the oratory, 
 Genius enough to make us great, 
 And more than blood enough to make us free." 
 
 PATRICIA. 
 
 THE END 
 
 PRINTED AT THE EDINBURGH PRESS, 9 AND 11 YOUNG STREET.
 
 A 000 051 904 1