We had reason to believe that the great world outside contained lower depths of misery than anything experienced by us; for, now and then, we caught glimpses of horrid, unkempt vagrants as they came to the porter’s lodge for a lodging; and, during our visits to St. Asaph, we could not enter the town without being impressed with the squalor of the Irish Square, which made us glad that we were not so disreputable as the ragged urchins of that sordid locality. Little as we were aware of it, our minds were becoming soiled by prejudices, just as our boots were stained with the greasy mud of that neighbourhood. The repulsiveness of the Square, and the insolence of the smutty-faced, bare-footed _gamins_, made us believe that Irishmen and Roman Catholics were barbarians and idolaters, and when, losing patience with their yelping clamour, we turned to resent their attacks, and saw them skurry to their kennels, we believed ourselves justified in the opinion that the young brats knew nothing of fair fighting. Once this opinion became fixed, no amount of argument would avail to prove its injustice. Probably the very morning that I had had to bide the brunt of their savage rudeness, and had been disgusted with their ugliness, had seen me superintending the cleaning of our dormitory, with a zeal inspired by my firm belief that before we could be called good, we must be clean, within and without, and that our hearts, our persons, and our dwellings, should be without stain. How I came to manifest the passion of a fanatic for order and cleanliness I know not, yet when it was my turn to clean up and make the beds, I was seized with a consuming desire to exhibit everything at its best, to arrange the beds without a single crease or pucker, to make the folds with mathematical exactness, to dust and polish cupboards and window-sills until they were speckless, and to make the flagstones shine like mirrors. ‘There,’ I would say to my companions detailed for these duties, my eyes sparkling with pride, ‘that is the way to wash a floor. Let us make the beds fit for princes to sleep in’; and hard after this triumph of order and neatness I would perhaps be despatched to the town to have every sense offended by the miracles of dirt and disorder in and around the Irish Square. No wonder that we felt unmitigated scorn for Irish habits and ways!