middling. She knows how to be grateful to the merest nonentities, and she can bestow reverence and undying fame upon persons who are little removed from mediocrity. The modern pathriot has never risen above the foot-hills; yet for Ireland he stands upon the pinnacle, and they say Hosanna to him. It is a sign of the times, however, that Erin is beginning to be alive to the fact that in the main the pathriot is just one of those persons with whom she can very well afford to dispense. Vaulting ambition hath rather overleaped itself in the matter of these gentry, and their posturings and screamings and clenchings of the fist are no longer received with altogether unanimous applause. That there is reason in all things is a simple lesson which pathriots who are not wholly careless of their future will do well to learn. Their well-worn parrot-cries of “tyranny,” “oppression,” “cowardice,” “robbery,” “murder,” and so forth are become just a trifle stale, flat, and unprofitable. Irishmen are weary of shrieks; they desire a trifle of sobriety and good sense. CHAPTER VI ORANGEMEN In matters Irish it is quite usual to talk of aiming at the manifestly impossible. If we could get rid of the priests, say some, Ireland would be a happy country; but nobody suggests how it is to be done, because everybody knows full well that it cannot be done. And nobody pretends to be quite sure that benefits would result if it were done. For myself, I believe that one of the most salutary things that could be done for Ireland at the present moment would be to get rid of the Orangemen. Though they are, of course, a much older organization, they occupy in Ireland pretty much the same position as the Passive Resisters occupy in this country. In other words, while they proclaim themselves to be the friends of liberty, they are in reality nothing more nor less than the friends of intolerance and tyranny. “A Grand Orange demonstration will be held in Donegal on Tuesday, 12th July 1898. Who fears to speak of Derry, Aughrim, and the Boyne? Papists, stand aside! We conquered you before, and can do so again. Our motto still is: Down with Home Rule, Hurrah for King William, and to Hell with the Pope!”