dear old Mickey, would not have said a word in opposition, but would have been greatly distressed and prayed her hardest in secret communion with God. My uncle Robert, would have been amused and, on worldly grounds, somewhat alarmed. I used to know pretty well an intellectual and cultivated priest and we had many talks together. I said to him that I liked so much. Catholic philosophy and was so attracted by his Church's stupendous history, and high pomp of good and evil that I would join it but for one difficulty; and when with some eagerness he asked what that was, I answered: 'How could I ever believe in the supernatural? Give that up,' I said, 'and I will join you.' I was much amused to notice that he seemed to hesitate, as if he thought there was something in what I said, and that with some adroitness a concession might be granted. Then he threw up his arms and shouted in his deep Kerry voice: 'No, impossible; we should collapse altogether.' Some weeks after this conversation I was lunching with my friend John Dowden and told him of what I said to the priest. 'What did he reply?' he asked looking very much alive. 'That it was impossible, for without the supernatural you would collapse altogether.' 'Of course we would, of course we would,' he repeated in a musing, grumbling kind of voice; & to myself I laughed thinking many things which I did not utter aloud. Now and again I went down to the pretty village of Monasterevan in County Kildare, thirty miles from Dublin, to stay with my uncle John Yeats, the County Surveyor. There was a house full of children, blue-eyed fair-haired, all gay and all lively, like a crystal fountain welling out of a rock, for there was little money and no pleasure and excitement. All these little people had just to depend on themselves for instruction and amusement and were yet happy, being like canaries in a cage who, having been born there, know no other life; partly also because of a certain inexhaustible vitality and its natural accompaniment, good temper and kindness. I loved to be with these people, little and big: merely to be in the same room with my uncle or to be in the same field (for he was a sort of amateur farmer) was happiness. He was very clever and, if he was ever unhappy, it was when he remembered that no one knew how clever he was: but I knew all about his cleverness and relished his laconic and fragmentary talk on men and things. In his eyes to be happy was to be good, and yet he had some reasons for being uneasy.