Thro' Ireland's Beauty Spots

Mrs. Hinsdale Took the Ladies' Union

IN A CHARMING TALK

Yesterday Afternoon - One of the Most Interesting of the Travel Series

One of the most interesting afternoons spent at the Ladies' Union was Wednesday, when despite the wind and rain, a large audience gathered in the parlors of the Unitarian church to hear Mrs. Hinsdale tell her experiences of travel in Southern Ireland. A mere report cannot tell the charm and ease with which Mrs. Hinsdale addressed the people, neither can it do justice to the cleverness and wit with which she told her experiences without manuscript and without notes. Beginning with the rocky, precipitous coast line of Ireland, Mrs. Hinsdale took you over the island, clothed with its magnificent green, the clefts filled with lichen and the wood and mountain scenery more beautiful than almost any in the world. You saw the oat-fields ripening in the dim sun, you were in the land where the strawberry abounds and the apple, the plum and the pear grow only on the garden wall, where the rose and the fuchsia live through all the winter, and where the roses wind and climb about the windowless huts to the chimneys on top. It was so real that you traveled the course with the story teller, reaching Dublin at daybreak, eating a breakfast and wanting to ride in a jaunting car "because it looked queer." While visiting the big stores, those of the linen and the lace, Mrs. Hinsdale said: "If the custom house hadn't loomed up so I would have stayed in these stores a little longer, but you can see it clear across the ocean when you're buying linen." We got into the car again. The driver headed directly in front of the motor man; but there is a difference between that country an this- the cart drivers have the right of way. nobody pays any attention to the motor man. If you get in his way, he stops till you get out."

After the shops, there was the cathedral, St. Patrick's, where Dean Swift and his Stella are forever commemorated. Having found the monument of Swift they sought in vain for Stella. "What has become of Stella?" asked Mrs. Hinsdale. "Here she is, I'm just a scrubbing her up," said the workman who was vigorously polishing on the inscription.

Getting into the car again to start off, the driver said, "I've tied it up with a rope, Mum, I think it will hold you now." Over level plains they went, through green pastures, among the sleekest, fattest cattle, on their way to Killarney. At one stopping place, a man was saying farewell to the land of the shamrock. Another was making a speech of adieu. "It's a foine land you're goin' to; it's a foine land to get a livin' in, but don't forget it's a foiner land you've gone away from." It isn't the Irish peasant we see in our country, but its generally the very poor typical Irish. Between 1870 and '80, seventy thousand emigrants left Ireland, three-fourths of whom came to the States. but at Killarney you see beautiful girls with cheeks like the bloom on a peach, eyes of blue and hair soft and wavy. At Killarney there are the three lakes, close together, sixteen miles long, and the three excursions, one to Muckrose Abbey, another to the Isle of Colleen Bawn and a third through Dunloe Gap. The grounds about the abbey is simply the ruined walls, sometimes an old tomb, sometimes an old pulpit, and always a woman selling photographs. Collen Bawn has about it all the romance and tragedy of the drama that makes it of so great interest. Dunloe Gap, "three miles and a bit" from Killarney required five shillings for a horse to get there on. Mrs. Hinsdale says of the ride: "I paid five shillings to ride five rods, and then I paid another shilling to the fellow to let me get off, and I concluded to walk through the gap."

"Over the Prince of Wales road to Cork is the finest inland road I ever took," said Mrs. Hinsdale. "With its green waterfalls, its its skirted glens, the blue waters of the bay, it is beautiful." In Cork is Father Prout's cathedral, made famous by "The Bells of Shandon" that sound so grand on the quiet waters of the River Lee. For two shillings the old sexton rang their tunes to the Irish melody of "Rory O'Moor," "The Last Rose of Summer," and for the American "The Old Folks at Home." Two nights and a day in Cork, the leave-taking city, after eight days in Ireland. To its beauty and its squalor, to its history and its romance, to its cathedral and its blarney stone, we said farewell in the morning, when the ships came in.