The Portland daily press., 1885-11-25

this opportunity to give them long temper
ance lecture. We wore them out without
any good result we fear, except to show
them we were match for their glib tongues.
One gentleman said che had seen nothing for
the day-they bothered him SO with the
Prince of Wales, what his highness said and
did what he drank and how many half
crowns he gave them" on that memorable
time twenty-five years ago, when Royalty
condescended with great pageantry to pay
visit to her starving subjects in Kerry coun-
ty. What deplorable condition of human
life to contemplated These people, keeping
this up day after day for long summer, and
one generation succeeding another to the
same inheritance of yagabondism.
GAP OF DUNLOP.
Hard by the entrance to the Gap stands
Kate Kearneys mud mansion, who little
dreamed while busy with the daily round of
her simple life, passing poet had caught
the glance of her eye and set her charms to
music We have many times since cried
Woe the day that we ever heard of Kate
Kearney! as the early morning workers and
the late night watchers necessarily hum:
Obi did We meier hear of Kate Kearney?
She lives by the lakes of Killarney.
Beware of her smile, for many vile
Lies hid in the smile of Kate Kearney.
Tho she looks so bewitchingly simple,
Yet there's mischief in every dimple,
And who dares inhale her sigh,s spicy gale
Must die by the breath of Kate KeaTney.
Her posterity still offer refreshment to the
passer-by, and sell her pictures and photo
graphs as mementoes of the place. The ride
through the gap is about four miles, passing
the castle of Dunloe, once the home of the
O'Sulliyans, and the lake into which the au-
thor of ''Colleen Bawn" threw his heroine.
The road winds beneath lodges and wooded
hills, to the Gap itself, which, in no respect
compares with our White Mountain Notches.
Indeed, when we recall the delightful excur-
sons available to any one in Portland, on
the P. & o. road, to Sebago Lake, through
Crooked River to Bridgton, and then if you
please the unequalled pleasure of a night on
Pleasant Mountain, we can truly say we have
seen nothing that excels it in all Europe.
On leaving the Gap we face the Black Valley
which in the shades of twilight must present
gloomy prospect, and to a lone traveller
suggests ghosts and highway robbers. Here
we look into the Stygian pool, Black Tough,
where st. Patrick is supposed to have cast,
incased in an iron chest, the last snake in
Ireland. Would that another saint would
appear to engulf Ireland's worst enemy,
''that biteth like a serpent and stingeth like
an adder" Feeling vexed that we had seen
so little and been so annoyed, we were glad
to reach the locked gate, through which we
must pass and cross a strip of worthless land
to meet the boats. An old woman turned the
key and held out her palm for the fee she
was to share with Lord Somebody-the titled
beggar, who are about as plenty in Eu-
rope as the untitled mendicants The row
through the chain of the Killarney lakes is
agreeable, but hardly worth description since
we have in Maine many which afford grander
views and more charming twists and turns
and pretty locks.
Sunday we strolled to the top of the hill to
view the ruins of Agdahoe once one Of the
most venerated abbeys in Ireland, and the
Round Tower which might have been
planned by the same brain and made by the
same hands which built the Tower at New
port, r. /. AS usual we strayed into the an
cient church yard, where sat on a moss COW
cred tablet in weary and forlorn attitude,
an attenuated, gray-haired son Of Erin's Isle
porting devoutly over his book. We shrank
from interrupting his devotion; but an En-
glishman of our party, more familiar with
the arts of the natives, stepped up behind
and dropped a sixpence into his hand. In
stantly the devotee was brought back to
earth, and rising, began with the greatest To-
quacity to point out the graves and give the
history and legends of the heroes and saints
beneath, and as might be expected, the most
renowned were his ancestors. Coming away
we questioned, unfairly perhaps, if he had
not posed there on that quiet Sabbath eve,
his Gaelic Bible on his knee, of which most
likely he could not read word, and his eyes
rolling up to Heaven, for an effective tab
leau for the strangers entertainment, upon
which the curtain dropped as our last scene
at Killarney. M. G. ?. b.