“There were presentations and receptions, and receiving and answering addresses, processions, walking, riding and driving, in morning and evening, military, academic, and medieval attire. The Prince had to breakfast, lunch, dine, and sup, with more or less publicity, every twenty-four hours. He had to go twice to races, with fifty or a hundred thousand people about him; to review a small army and make a tour in the Wicklow mountains, of course everywhere receiving addresses under canopies and dining in State under galleries full of spectators. He visited and inspected institutions, colleges, universities, academies, libraries, and cattle shows. He had to take a very active part in assemblies of from several hundred to several thousand dancers, and always to select for his partners the most important personages.… He had to listen to many speeches sufficiently to know when and what to answer. He had to examine with respectful interest, pictures, books, antiquities, relics, manuscripts, specimens, bones, fossils, prize beasts, and works of Irish art. He had never to be unequal to the occasion, however different from the last, or however like the last, and whatever his disadvantage as to the novelty or dulness of the matter and the scene.” [Illustration: KING EDWARD AT THE AGE OF TWENTY-THREE _From a Painting by Weigall, published by Henry Graves and Co._] Some amusing incidents happened. A loyal Irish girl, determined to have a good look at her future King and Queen, defied all rails and barriers, and, mounted on horseback, dashed through the crowd of sightseers and galloped past the Royal visitors, exclaiming, “Oh, thank you all, I have seen them and shall go home happy now.” King Edward, with a smile, raised his hat, which was certainly the most sensible thing he could have done in the circumstances. The King has always shown great interest in Ireland and Irish matters, so much so that it has been more than once whispered that he is a Home Ruler. He gave his warm support and help to a fund for the relief of distress in Ireland, and more recently, during the annual Show of the Royal Agricultural Society, he took the opportunity to receive and entertain at Sandringham no fewer than three hundred and fifty Irish tenant-farmers.