Part 27 (1/2)
”Of course you're from America,” he said. ”One can see that.” And when I nodded a.s.sent, he added, ”Well, you Americans brag like h.e.l.l, but you have good reason to.”
I glanced at him again, thinking perhaps I had mistaken his vocation; but there was no mistaking his rabat.
”I have been to America,” he went on. ”I went there as a beggar for a church here; and after my mission was done, I rested and enjoyed myself; and I want to say that there is no country like America.”
The words were said with an earnestness that warmed my heart; and of course I agreed with him; and then, when he learned we were from Ohio, he told us how he had crossed our State on his way to San Francisco, and that seemed to establish a kind of relations.h.i.+p; and when we were satisfied with looking at the fish, he insisted on taking us through the marble works, just across the river, where some great columns of Connemara marble were being polished. It comes from a quarry high on Lissoughter, which we were soon to visit--though we didn't know it then!--and it is very beautiful indeed, usually a deep green, but sometimes a warm brown, and always gorgeously veined.
And then he asked us if we wouldn't like to see Queen's College, the Galway branch of the National University of Ireland; and of course we said we would, and so we started for it, he pus.h.i.+ng his wheel before him; and on the way, we met a handsome old man, who stopped when he saw us, and smilingly asked for an introduction. It proved to be Bishop O'Dee, and even in the short chat we had with him, it was easy to see that he deserved his reputation for culture and scholars.h.i.+p. He has two pet aversions, so our guide told us, as we went on together, bribery and drunkenness. I don't imagine there is much bribery in Connaught, but I fear the Bishop has a formidable antagonist in John Barleycorn.
We came to the college presently--a fine Gothic building, with a good quadrangle, and we went through its somewhat heterogeneous museum and looked in at some of the halls. There are now about a hundred and forty pupils, so our guide said, and the new seminary, which drew students from all the west of Ireland, and which was just getting nicely started, was certain to increase this number greatly.
The National University of Ireland was established in 1908, as I understand it, for the purpose of affording Catholic youth an opportunity for higher education. The act provides that ”no test whatever of religious belief shall be imposed on any person as a condition of his becoming or continuing to be a professor, lecturer, fellow, scholar or student” of the college; nevertheless it is well understood that its spirit and atmosphere are Catholic, and such Protestant youth as desire higher education usually enter Trinity College, Dublin, or Queen's College, Belfast. There are three colleges in the National University of Ireland--University College, Dublin, which is the parent inst.i.tution, Queen's College, Cork, and Queen's College, Galway. All of them are maintained by state grants.
I am not quite clear as to the maintenance of the new seminary, to which our guide next conducted us; but it is a mammoth building, with queer squat towers, giving it an aspect quite oriental. Our guide said that the architecture was Irish-Romanesque, but it reminded me of nothing so much as of the pictures I had seen of the temples of ancient Syria and Egypt. The seminary is really an intermediate school, and is planned on a very extensive scale. Its promoters are hoping great things for it, which I trust will come to pa.s.s. We mounted to the top of the main tower, and looked out over the bay and the hills, and talked of America and of Ireland, and of many other things, and then our guide asked us if we wouldn't come and have tea with him.
”Ah, I hope you will come,” he urged, seeing that we hesitated. ”When I was in America, the welcome I got was so warm and open-hearted, that I feel I am forever indebted to all Americans, and it is a great pleasure to me when I am able to repay a little of that kindness. It's few opportunities I have, and I hope you won't refuse me this one.”
So we accepted the invitation, telling him how kind we thought it, and started back through the streets, with the women and children courtesying to our guide as we pa.s.sed, and he never failing to give them a pleasant word.
”'Tis not to my own quarters I'll be taking you,” he explained, ”but to those of a brother priest, who will be proud to have them put to this use,” and he stopped in front of a row of little houses, called St.
Joseph's Terrace, and opened the door of one of them, and ushered us in, and called the old servant, and bade her get us tea.
It was served in a bare little dining-room--with bread and b.u.t.ter and jam and cake--and very good it tasted, though the tea was far too strong for us, and we had to ask for some hot water with which to weaken it.
Our host laughed at us; he drank his straight, without milk or sugar, and he told us about the first time he ordered tea in New York. When he started to pour it, he thought the cook had forgot to put any tea in the pot, so he called the waiter and sent it back; and the waiter, who was Irish and understood, laughed and took the pot back and put some more tea in.
”It was still far too weak,” went on our host; ”but I was ashamed to say anything more, so I drank it, though I might as well have been drinking hot water. Indeed, I got no good tea in America. And I nearly burnt my mouth off me once, trying to eat ice-cream. I took a great spoonful, without knowing what it would be like, and I thought it would be the death of me. And I shall never forget the first time they served Indian corn. It was in great long ears, such as I had never seen before; and I had no idea how to eat it, so I said it didn't agree with me; and then I was astonished to see the other people at the table--educated, cultured people they were, too--pick it up in their fingers and gnaw it off just as an animal would! Ah, that was a strange sight!”
I do not know when I have spent a pleasanter half-hour; but he had to bid us good-bye, at last, for he was due at some service; and he wrung our hands and wished us G.o.dspeed, and sprang on his bicycle and pedalled off down the road, turning at the corner to wave his hat to us. And I am sure his heart was light at thought of the good deed he had done that day!
Galway possesses a tram-line, which starts at the head of Shop Street and runs out to a suburb called Salthill; and as this happens to pa.s.s St. Joseph's Terrace, we walked slowly on until a tram should come along. And in a moment a woman stopped us--a woman so ragged and forlorn and with such a tale of woe that, in spite of my dislike for beggars and suspicion of them, I gave her sixpence; and she fairly broke down and wept at sight of that bit of silver, and we walked on followed by her blessings and thinking sadly of the want and misery of Ireland's people.
We had another instance of it, before long, for after we had got on the tram, an old man stopped it and tried to clamber aboard, but the conductor put him off, after a short sharp altercation, and he followed us along the sidewalk, shaking his stick and, I suppose, hurling curses after us. The conductor explained that the old fellow had no money to pay for a ticket, but had proposed to pay for it after he had collected some money which was due him in Galway. This he no doubt considered an entirely reasonable proposition, and he was justly incensed when the conductor refused to extend the small necessary credit.
”Them ones gave us trouble enough at first,” the conductor added. ”They thought because the trams were owned by the town that they should all ride free, and that only strangers should be made to pay. Even yet, they think it downright savage of us to put them off just because they haven't the price of a ticket. It costs us no more, they say, to take them than to leave them, and so, out of kindness and charity, we ought to take them. Och, but they're a thick-headed people!” he concluded, and retired to the rear platform to ruminate upon the trials of his position.
We got down at the head of Shop Street, and Betty went on to the hotel to rest, while I spent a pleasant half-hour wandering about the streets and through the calf-market. There were numbers of little red calves, cooped up in tiny pens, and groups of countrymen standing about looking at them, their hands under their coat-tails and their faces quite dest.i.tute of expression. At long intervals there would be a little bargaining; which, if the would-be purchaser was in earnest, grew sharper and sharper, sometimes ending in mutual recriminations, and sometimes in an agreement, in which case buyer and seller struck hands on it. Then the calf in question would be caught and his legs tied together, and a piece of gunny-sack wrapped about him, and he would be carried away by his new owner. Or perhaps he might be sent somewhere by parcel-post. Calves tied up in gunny-sacks with their heads sticking out form a considerable portion of the Irish mail--how often have I seen the postmen lifting them on and off the cars or lugging them away to the parcel-room!
Betty rejoined me, after a time, and we got on the tram to ride out to Salthill. Curiously enough, when we had climbed to the top of it, we found sitting there the old man whom we had seen put off earlier in the afternoon. I don't know whether he recognised us; but he at once proceeded to relate to us the story of that misadventure, with great warmth and in minutest detail--just as he would relate it, no doubt, to every listener for a month to come.
”Why, G.o.d bless ye, sir, I told the felly he should have his penny,” he explained, with the utmost earnestness. ”There was a man in the town would be owin' me eight s.h.i.+llin's, and he had promised to pay me this very evenin'--but it was no use; he put me off into the road, bad cess to him, and it was in my mind to lay my stick across his head. But he can't put me off now,” he added triumphantly, and held up his ticket for us to see.
And then he told us how he had five miles to walk beyond the end of the tram-line before he would be home; but he seemed to think nothing of having had to walk ten or twelve miles to collect his wages. Indeed, most Irish regard such a walk as not worth thinking of; which is as well, since many children have to walk four or five miles to school, and men and women alike will trudge twice that distance in going from one tiny field to another to do a bit of cultivating. Our new-found friend seemed quite taken with us, for when the tram came to a stop, he asked us if we wouldn't have a drink with him; and when we declined, bade us a warm good-bye, with many kind wishes, and then shambled over to the public-house for a last drink by himself. Twenty minutes later, we saw him go past along the road, his face to the west, on the long walk to his tiny home among the hills.
Salthill is a popular summer resort, and has a picturesque beach. The view out over Galway Bay is very beautiful, and the wide stretch of water seems to offer a perfect harbour; but there were no s.h.i.+ps riding at anchor there. Time was when the people of the town fancied their bay was to become a world-famous port because of its nearness to America, and a steams.h.i.+p company was formed, and the government was persuaded to build a great breakwater and half a mile of quays and a floating dock five acres in extent. But the company's life was a short one, for one of its boats sank and another burned, and the other companies all preferred to go on to Liverpool or London or Southampton, and the docks and quays and harbour of Galway were left deserted, save for the little hookers of the Claddagh fishermen.
CHAPTER XIX
IAR CONNAUGHT