Of course there was consternation, but after a moment an officer stood up and began to sing "God Save the King." All the other officers and the "ascendancy people," as we call our English upper class in Ireland, rose and joined him. But you cannot safely sing "God Save the King" in Dublin. Eggs and vegetables at once began to fly, and the curtain had to be rung down. So ended the Dublin run of "An Englishman's Home"! These things the Fianna boys told me on our way to the shooting-gallery where they wanted to see the Glasgow "boy" shoot. I hit the bull's-eye oftener than any of them, much to the delight of the boy who knew I was a girl. He was not much surprised, however, for by her own skill Madam had accustomed them to expect good marksmanship in a woman. II As this was my first visit to Dublin, Madam thought I might want to see some of the sights. She took me to a museum and next suggested that we visit an art gallery. "What I really want to see," I told her, "is the poorest part of Dublin, the very _poorest_ part." This pleased her, for her heart is always there. She took me to Ash Street. I do not believe there is a worse street in the world than Ash Street. It lies in a hollow where sewage runs and refuse falls; it is not paved and is full of holes. One might think it had been under shell-fire. Some of the houses have fallen down,--from sheer weariness it seems,--while others are shored up at the sides with beams. The fallen houses look like corpses, the others like cripples leaning upon crutches. Dublin is full of such streets, lanes, and courts where houses, years ago condemned by the authorities, are still tenanted. These houses are symbolic of the downfall of Ireland. They were built by rich Irishmen for their homes. To-day they are tenements for the poorest Irish people, but they have not been remodeled for this purpose, and that is one reason why them seem so appalling--the poor among the ruins of grandeur. In one room, perhaps a drawing-room, you find four families, each in its own corner, with sometimes not as much as the tattered curtains for partitions. Above them may be a ceiling of wonderfully modeled and painted figures, a form of decoration the art of which has been lost. At the end of this room is a mantel of purest white marble over an enormous fireplace long ago blocked up, except for a small opening in which a few coals at a time may be burned. The doors of such a room are often made of solid mahogany fifteen feet in height. The gas company of Dublin refuses to furnish gas above the second floor, and the little fireplaces can never give enough heat, even when fuel is comparatively plentiful. As I write, coal is fifteen dollars a ton, and is costing the poor, who buy in small quantities, from thirty to forty-five per cent. more.