‘Wait, now--wait,’ said the priest; ‘don’t be in such a tearing hurry. I’ll talk as serious as you like, and not hurt your feelings, if you’ll stay for a minute or two. Listen, now. Isn’t the language dying on the people’s lips? They’re talking the English, more and more of them every day; and don’t you know as well as I do that when they lose their Irish they’ll lose half the good that’s in them? What sort will the next generation of our people be, with their own language gone from them, and their Irish ways forgotten, and all the old tales and songs and tunes perished away like the froth of the waves that the storm blew up across the fields the night your father died? I’ll tell you what they’ll be--just sham Englishmen. And the Lord knows the real thing is not the best kind of man in the world, but the copy of an Englishman! sure, that’s the poorest creature to be found anywhere on the face of God’s good earth. And that’s what we’ll be, when the Irish is gone from us. Wouldn’t there be work enough for you to do, now, if you were to buy Thady Durkan’s boat, and stay here and help to keep the people to the old tongue and the old ways?’ Hyacinth shook his head. His mood was altogether too heroic to allow him to think highly of what the priest said to him. He loved the Irish language as his native speech--loved it, too, as a symbol, and something more, perhaps--as an expression of the nationality of Ireland. But it did not seem to him to be a very essential thing, and to spend his life talking it and persuading other people to talk it was an obscure kind of patriotism which made no strong appeal to him--which, indeed, could not stand compared to the glory of drawing the sword. ‘You’ve listened to what I’ve told you, Father Moran, and you say that you understand what I feel, but I don’t think you really do, or else you wouldn’t fancy that I could be satisfied to stay here. What is it you ask of me? To spend my time fishing and talking Irish and dancing jigs. Ah! it’s well enough I’d like to do it. Don’t think that such a life wouldn’t be pleasant to me. It would be too pleasant. That’s what’s the matter with it. It’s a temptation, and not a duty, that you’re setting before me.’