"Look at the present fine weather. This is a very early season. No living man has seen such a spring-time in Ireland. Two months of fine warm weather, the ground in fine working condition, everything six weeks before last year. Not a man that started to dig a day earlier. No, the old time will be adhered to just as if it was cold and wet and freezing. You could not stir them with an electric battery. They moon, moon, moon along, in the old, old, old way, waiting for somebody to come and do something for them. "If they had the land for nothing they would be no better off. They would just do that much less work. They live from hand to mouth. They have no ambition. The same thing that did for their fathers will do for them, the same dirtiness, the same inconvenience. If their father went three miles round a stone wall to get in at a gate they'll do it too. Never would they think of making another gate. They turn round angrily and say, 'Wasn't it good enough for my father, an' wasn't he a betther man than ayther me or you?' If you lived here, you would at first begin to show them things, but when you saw how much better they like their own way you'd stop it. You'd very soon get your heart broke. You couldn't stir them an inch in a thousand years. What will Home Rule do for them? Nobody knows but Gladstone and the Divil." A bystander said: "Down at Galway there was a man wid a donkey goin' about sellin' fish, which was carried in two panniers. Whin he had only enough to fill one pannier, he put a load o' stones into the other pannier to balance the fish an' make the panniers stick on, an' ride aisier. "Well, one day an Englishman that had been watchin' Barney for some time comes up to him an' he says, says he-- "'Whin ye have only fish for one pannier why do ye fill up the other wid stones off the beach?' says he. "'Sure, 'tis to balance it,' says Barney, mighty surprised an' laffin widin himself at the Englishman's ignorance. 'Sure,' says Barney, 'ye wouldn't have a cock-eyed load on the baste, all swingin' on one side, like a pig wid one ear, would ye?' says he. "But this Englishman was one of thim stiff sort that doesn't know whin he's bate, an' he went on arguin'. Says he-- "'But couldn't you put the half of the fish in one pannier, and the other half in the other pannier, instead of putting all the fish in one, and filling up the other with stones?' says he. 'Wouldn't that balance the load?' says he. 'And wouldn't that be only half the load for the poor baste?' says he. An' Barney sthruggled a bit till he got a fair grip iv it, d'ye see, but by the sivin pipers that played before Moses, he couldn't see the way to answer this big word of the Englishman; so he says, says he, 'Musha, 'twas me father's way, rest his sowl,' says he. 'An' would I be settin' meself up to be bettherin' his larnin'?' says he. 'Not one o' me would show him sich impidence and disrespect,' says he. 'An' I'll carry the rocks till I die, glory be to God,' says he.