country, which in places is rather pretty. Our route is well away from the railroad and we see much of retired rural sections which would not be easily accessible by other means of travel. The infrequent cottages are mean and dirty, but those we saw later were so much worse that the recollection of the first is nearly effaced. Never did a hotel seem more inviting to us than did the Imperial at Cork. The car and everything about it is a dirty gray; one tire is flat, and has been--we don't know how long. But we are fortunate in our hotel and our troubles are soon forgotten. Our room is an immense high-ceilinged apartment with massive furniture and a vast deal of bric-a-brac, including a plaster bust of Washington. There are plenty of settees and easy chairs--things uncommon enough in hotels to merit special mention. We have an excellent dinner served just to suit, and the experiences of the day soon begin to appear in a different light than they did when we were undergoing them. We are soon in the ample tall-posted beds, clean and unspeakably comfortable, and our sleep is too deep to even dream of Irish roads and motor cars. XIX THROUGH SOUTHERN IRELAND Cork is the gateway by which a large number of visitors enter Ireland, and is pretty sure to be on the route of anyone making a tour of the Island. It manifestly has no place in this record, nor has Blarney Castle, the most famous ruin in the world--among Americans, at least. And yet, who could write of an Irish tour and make no reference to Blarney. We may be pardoned for a hasty glance at our visit to the castle on the day after our arrival at Cork. The head porter at the Imperial, clad in his faultless moss-green uniform, the stateliest and clearly the most important man in the hotel, marshals his assistants and they strap our luggage to the car--he does no work himself, nor would anyone be so presumptuous as to expect it of a man of such mighty presence. We recognize the fact that his fee must be in proportion to his dignity, and he receives it much as his forefathers, the ancient Irish kings, exacted tribute from their vassals. He is not content to have us take the direct route to Blarney, only five or six miles, but tells us of a longer but more picturesque route and gives us a rather confusing lot of directions, which we have some little difficulty in following. Suffice it to say that after a deal of inquiry and much wandering through steep stony lanes--an aggregate of more than fifteen miles out of our way--we catch sight of the square-topped tower of Blarney and hear the shouts and laughter of a train-load of excursionists who are just arriving.