Notwithstanding these conditions a stranger always receives a polite and a cordial welcome and usually an invitation to come in and rest and drink a cup of milk. There is no apology for poverty, or the appearance of things; there is no obsequiousness and no insolence, but a dignified, hearty handclasp at the coming and at the going and a cheerful invitation to call again. The Children of the Mist are invariably well behaved and polite. Although their clothes are ragged and their bodies are filthy with dirt, they have the same manners you would expect among the nobility. They are always obedient, deferential, and unselfish. They are kind and attentive to their younger brothers and sisters, and show perfect respect to their parents and elders. We have seen them in the cabins, in the fields, and in the schools. I have asked everybody where they get their manners, and who teaches them deportment in this barren wilderness of filth and bad smells. I asked Miss Walshe, the medical officer of the district, who goes from cabin to cabin as an angel of healing; I asked Miss O'Donnell, who has charge of the lace school; I asked the head constable at the police station; I asked the school-teachers and others, and they all say that the politeness of the Irish peasants, like their pride, is inborn and final proof that they are the descendants of kings. This pride is a strange thing, and it is most surprising. Every woman you find in a soiled and ragged dress in a wretched cabin receives you as her equal and talks with dignity and without restraint, and Mr. Duke, manager of the Eccles Hotel, told me this morning of a mountain peasant whose raggedness aroused his sympathy, but who would not accept a suit of clothes. Miss O'Donnell, the lace teacher, and Miss Walshe, the nurse, told us that the pretty young women we saw in the lace school and the boys and girls we saw in the national school, all come from such cabins as I have described. Some of the blue-eyed, bare-footed urchins have complexions that society belles would give their souls for, and long, beautiful coal-black hair, yet they sleep on a mud floor with pigs and chickens, and many of them walk three and four miles and back for the privilege of attending school. With a little training these children make excellent servants, faithful, obedient, and tactful, and almost without exception they go to mass and confession regularly, and they have a high standard of morals and a conscientious devotion to duty. Although it costs as much to get married as it does to buy a ticket to America, there are no unmarried people living together here; illegitimate births are extremely rare and chastity is the commonest of virtues.