The Birmingham age-herald., 1909-08-08
THROUGH IRELAND
 ON BICYCLES Four Months Outing At Cost
 of $500 TAKEN BY TWO WOMEN Who Wanted To See Europe and Did Not Want To Be Personally Con ducted-Good Roads and
 Friendly People.
TAKEN BY TWO WOMEN

From the New York Sun.
 Three hundred dollars and four months in Europe-that is what I had and what l wanted to get out of it. When a woman has passed into her sos without travelling a hundred miles away from her home town while her friends have been in almost every quarter of the globe, you know how she feels.'
 The speaker was a womanu from the southwest, who stopped in New York the other day on her way to make her eighth wheeling trip abroad.
 s'The question with me was whom to go with rather than where to go.' she went on "As had never been abroad all countries were about equally attrac- tive. The main point was to get some one who was willing to travel In the cheap way necessary to make my $500 hold out for four months.
 That person when found proved to be the college chum of a friend l had known since my girlhood She declared that though we had never seen each other before she was sure we would get on charmingly for the simple reason that both of us wanted to go to Europe and neither was willing to be tied down to a personally conducted tour.
 
 "It was in March that we met. Within half an hour we had decided to take a bicycle trip through Ireland with three weeks stay in Paris as an ending. My new friend was anxious to go to Ireland. because she had been studying Gaelic. She offered to give me the beenft of her instruction and lend me all her books on the subject. As there was still two months before we were to leave ac- cepted her offer.
 My friend took her sketch box and l my camera and both of us took our wheels. The cost of our ocean voyage was reduced as far as possible by taking q round trip ticket by one of the slower steamship lines. We had practically all the comforts to be had on the faster and more expensive lines. The difference seems to be that whereas the expensive lines make the trip in a weeks time and less the slower lines require 10 days or more.
 T first set foot on foreign soil at Queenstown. After a two days stay here we began our tour first on our wheels, then jaunting car. We travelled by train when desirable. Everywhere we were received with the greatest friendliness, and in exchange for our stories and descriptions of Americaa the peasants, old and young, told us the legends and folk tales of their conn- try and sang for us quaint Gaelic songs. All through our trip in Ireland America was a word to conJure with. We had only to let our nationality be known to get what we wanted and oft on more.
 After spending few days in Gal way we pushed on into Connemara, where we spent two delightful weeks more tt an 20 miles away from the near est railroad station. Here my friends Knowledge of Gaelic was convenient as English is almost an unknown tongue. During these two weeks we enjoyed delightful bathing and boating in the arms of the sea penetrating the west ern coast
 Finally, tearing ourselves away from the blue lochs and brown bogs. we turned our faces eastward toward Dub- lin. My friend had calculated our time In such way that we arrived