of the three R’s.  His case reminds me of a story of my ranching days, which the exercise of patronage has so often recalled to my mind that I must out with it.  Riding into camp one evening, I turned my horse loose and got some supper, which was a vilely cooked meal even for a cow camp.  Recognising in the cook a cowboy I had formerly employed, I said to him, ’You were a way up cow hand, but as cook you are no account.  Why did you give up riding and take to cooking?  What are your qualifications as a cook any way?’ ‘Qualifications!’ he replied, ‘why, don’t you know I’ve got varicose veins?’ My caller’s qualifications are of an equally negative description, though not of a physical kind.  He is one of the young Micawbers, to whom the Department from its first inception has been the something which was to turn up.  He had, of course, testimonials which in any other country would have commanded success by their terms and the position of the signatories, but which in Ireland only illustrate the charity with which we condone our moral cowardice under the name of good nature.  I am glad when this interview closes.

One more type—­a Nationalist Member of Parliament!  He does not often darken the door of a Government office—­they all have the same structural defect, no front stairs—­he never has asked and never thought he would ask anything from the Government.  But he is interested in some poor fishermen of County Clare who pursue their calling under cruel disadvantages for want of the protection from the Atlantic rollers which a small breakwater would afford.  It is true that they were the worst constituents he had—–­ went against him in ’The Split,’—­but if I saw how they lived, and so on.  I knew all about the case.  A breakwater to be of any use would cost a very large sum, and the local authority, though sympathetic, did not see their way to contribute their proportion, and without a local contribution, I explained, the Department could not, consistently with its principles, unless in most exceptional—­Here he breaks in:  ’Oh! that red tape.  You’re as bad as the rest—­exceptional, indeed!  Why, everything is exceptional in my constituency.  I am a bit that way myself.  But, seriously, the condition of these poor people would move even a Government official.  Besides, you remember the night I made thirteen speeches on the Naval Estimates—­the Government wanted a little matter of twenty millions—­and you met me in the Lobby and told me you wished to go to bed, and asked me what I really wanted, and—­I am always reasonable—­I said I would pass the whole Naval Programme if I got the Government to give them a boat-slip at Ballyduck.—­“Done!” you said, and we both went home.—­I believe you knew that I had got constituency matters mixed up, that Ballyduck was inland, and that it was Ballycrow that I meant to say.—­But you won’t deny that you are under a moral obligation.’