Nasby in Exile: or, Six Months of Travel in England, Ireland, Scotland, France, Germany, Switzerland and Belgium, with many things not of travel
John Locke · en
As he spoke he pointed to a flying squadron of a hundred and fifty men,
who were riding back to Mitchellstown after having evicted a number of
tenants who had been unable to pay the back rent. They were a fine
looking body of men, well mounted and well armed, each one carrying a
loaded carbine, while at his side was dangling a sword bayonet.
[Illustration: INTERIOR OF A CABIN IN KILLALEEN.]
But our business in hand was not speculating upon results so much as to
see the actual conditions that led to and still sustains the agitation.
So we plodded on, through the drenching rain that was coming down in
torrents, up the bleak and desolate hill side.
Along the side of the road were high stone fences, from four to seven
feet wide at the top, rather good fences for so poor a country.
"Why, you see," said Mr. Duggan in reply to an inquiry as to how they
found time to make such solid substantial fences, "those stones were
every one taken from that field there, and having no other place to put
them we made a fence, and our rent was raised on us for doing it, worse
the luck."
[Sidenote: ANOTHER CABIN.]
We looked into the field whence these stones were taken. It was as
uninviting a piece of ground as can be imagined, still full of huge
boulders, rocks, weeds and the never-dying heather. It was not capable
of supporting a sparrow, yet for the slight improvement that had been
made, the rent had been raised. Great inducement that for a man to work!
Seeing a little low, thatched cabin just off the road, we asked in all
simplicity, if it had any history, for by this time it was beginning to
dawn upon us that almost everything in that vicinity had some story
connected with it. But we were totally unprepared for the reply.
[Illustration: A QUIVER FULL.]
"No, there's no history about it. It is simply the dwelling place of a
family of people who are daily expecting to be evicted because they
can't pay the rent, the father having been unable, through sickness, to
work all of the season."
The idea that human beings, made in God's image, having the power to
think, to reason and to act, could live, even exist, in such a hovel as
that was so incredible that we insisted upon going over and seeing how
it was done.