It is like crossing the dark river called Death, to many, to think of leaving Ireland—­besides that, even if they wanted to go they haven’t money to buy a steerage ticket.

From across the dark river called Death come no remittances; but from America many dollars are sent back to Ireland.  This often supplies the obolus that secures the necessary bit of Cunard passport.

Whenever an Irishman embarks at Queenstown, part of the five million inhabitants go down to the waterside to see him off.  Not long ago I stood with the crowd and watched two fine lads go up the gangplank, each carrying a red handkerchief containing his worldly goods.  As the good ship moved away we lifted a wild wail of woe that drowned the sobbing of the waves.  Everybody cried—­I wept, too—­and as the great, black ship became but a speck on the Western horizon we embraced each other in frenzied grief.

There is beauty in Ireland—­physical beauty of so rare and radiant a type that it makes the heart of an artist ache to think that it can not endure.  On country roads, at fair time, the traveler will see barefoot girls who are women, and just suspecting it, who have cheeks like ripe pippins; laughing eyes with long, dark, wicked lashes; teeth like ivory; necks of perfect poise; and waists that, never having known a corset, are pure Greek.

Of course, these girls are aware that we admire them—­how could they help it?  They carry big baskets on either shapely arm, bundles balanced on their heads, and we, suddenly grown tired, sit on the bankside as they pass by, and feign indifference to their charms.

Once safely past, we admiringly examine their tracks in the soft mud (for there has been a shower during the night), and we vow that such footprints were never before left upon the sands of time.

The typical young woman in Ireland is Juno before she was married; the old woman is Sycorax after Caliban was weaned.  Wrinkled, toothless, yellow old hags are seen sitting by the roadside, rocking back and forth, crooning a song that is mate to the chant of the witches in “Macbeth” when they brew the hellbroth.

See that wizened, scarred and cruel old face—­how it speaks of a seared and bitter heart! so dull yet so alert, so changeful yet so impassive, so immobile yet so cunning—­a paradox in wrinkles, where half-stifled desperation has clawed at the soul until it has fled, and only dead indifference or greedy expectation is left to tell the tragic tale.

“In the name of God, charity, kind gentlemen, charity!” and the old crone stretches forth a long, bony claw.  Should you pass on she calls down curses on your head.  If you are wise, you go back and fling her a copper to stop the cold streaks that are shooting up your spine.  And these old women were the most trying sights I saw in Ireland.

“Pshaw!” said a friend of mine when I told him this; “these old creatures are actors, and if you would sit down and talk to them, as I have done, they will laugh and joke, and tell you of sons in America who are policemen, and then they will fill black ‘dhudeens’ out of your tobacco and ask if you know Mike McGuire who lives in She-ka-gy.”