The English tourist swallows it all whole as it comes to him, and writes his account to the sympathetic Press, which publishes as gospel stories which have not one word of truth in them.  In fact, the term “English tourist” has come to mean the same as gobemouche in France; and clever Pat knows well enough that there is not a fly in the whole region of fable which is too large for the brutal Saxon to swallow.  Abject poverty without shoes to its feet, with only a few rags to cover its unwashed nakedness, and an unfurnished mud cabin shared with the pigs and poultry for its sole dwelling-place—­abject poverty begs a copper from “his honour” for the love of God and the glory of the Blessed Virgin, telling meantime a heartrending story of privation and oppression.  Abject poverty points to all the outward signs and circumstances of its woe; but it forgets the good stone house in which live the son and the son’s wife—­the dozen or more of cattle grazing free on the mountain side—­that bit of fertile land where the very weeds grow into beauty by their luxuriance—­and those quiet hundreds hidden away for the sole pleasure of hoarding.  And the English tourist takes it all in, and blazes out into wrath against the tyrannous landlord who has reduced an honest citizen to this fearful state of misery; knowing nothing of the craft which is known to all the residents round about, and not willing to believe it were he even told.  For the dramatic instinct is strong in human nature, and in these later days there is an ebullient surplusage of sympathy which only desires to find an object.  Across the Bristol Channel, the English tourist finds these objects ready-made to his hand; and the question is still further embroiled, and the light of truth still more obscured, that a few impulsive, credulous, and non-judicially-minded young people may find something whereon to excite their emotions, and give vent to them in letters to the newspapers when excited.

Only the other day a young Irishman who has to do with the land question was mistaken for a brutal but credulous Saxon by the jarvey who had him in tow.  Consequently, Pat plied his fancied victim with the wildest stories of this man’s wrongs and that lone widow’s sufferings.  When he found out his mistake he laughed and said:  “Begorra, I thought your honour was an English tourist!” And at a certain trial which took place in Cork, the judge put by some absurd statement by saying, half-indignant, half amused:  “Do you take me for an English tourist?” Nevertheless the race will continue so long as there are excitable young persons of either sex whose capacity for swallowing flies is practically unlimited, and an hysterical Press to which they can betake themselves.

The following authoritative instance of this misplaced sympathy may suffice.  The Westminster Review published a certain article on the Olphert estate, among other things.  Those who have read it know its sensational character.  At Cork the other day the priest concerned had to confess on oath that only three of the Olphert tenants had received relief.[D]