What They Are

Saying in Ireland

A

LAND of Heart's Desire, Ireland has been to thousands of us who do not claim her as our mother country, but who turn to her when we dream. She stands for beauty, for romance, for tenderness, for all delicate loveliness. Despite her haunting sorrows, we give her the freesouled welcome, usually won only by the joyous and the young. She is like an ideal that cannot tarnish, an aim that cannot fail, a pure flame that the bitter winds of the world may twist but cannot destroy. But no one can go to Ireland for solace now, either

Collier's, The National Weekly

in spirit or in the flesh. I have been in shell-racked Belgium, in towns in France that had been wholly obliterated; I have lived for weeks under shell fire; I have been in countries where foreign troops occupied enemy territory, yet I have never seen anything like the present front in Ireland. For here is a land neither at war nor in a state of peace, where desperate guerrilla warfare breaks the nerves of people, wastes property and lives.

Whoever has felt deeply the six years of war and its aftermath and then visits Ireland, passing from

very

zone to zone of grief and despair, may well forget that he is expected by this and that group to take sides, may only mourn the violence and murder and anguish, the false testimony, the wrong vision, the broken hopes, the unparalleled bitterness, the futile strife that corrodes and torments the country.

Mrs. Terence Malone lived in a little cottage in a village within sound of the soothering Irish Sea. I know the place well. She and Terence had a one-roomed little thatched cabin where the pig and the hens made themselves free, and were pointed at

with pride by Mary Malone, for they were her dowry, and without them she could not have "got" Terence. She used to tell me how she had nothing in the world but one feather bed and a deal press, but then, glory be to God, an old ancient uncle died and left her the creatures, so that Terence's father and her father were able to strike a bargain, and the young people could put up their banns. Terence was only a laborer then, but he could read and write and had a quiet, strong way with him, so the postmaster, who was his uncle, got him on the police force. Being a decent, clever boy, he rose and rose, and a sister in America sent him a little money, and in time they were able to rent a grand little cottage with a slate roof that the County Council Board built.

Many a time I have sat in Mary Malone's best room and heard her plans for her three little boys. I should have preferred the kitchen, but I think Mary had a feeling that her dreams for her children had a better chance of coming true if she uttered them here, in the midst of her treasures-the armchair with the knitted tidy, the white curtains tied with pink ribbons, and the real mahogany table that she bought for a song at Dunn's auction, the time the auctioneer had taken drink and knocked it down to her, not hearing the bid Maggie Sheehy made, and her dancing mad over it. Little Terry, the eldest boy, was, of course, to be a priest, and he that quick at his books already that he'd get through his course in no time at all and be ready to help his little brothers. Micky was always trying to cure sick animals, and for why shouldn't he be a doctor, the way the country would always be full of sick people,

and plenty of work for a handy doctor! Shamus would follow in his father's footsteps. Sure, it would cost a lot, and her own health wasn't good any more, but Terence was a fine strong man and never wasted money on drink, so there was no doubt the childher would get their education.

ECAUSE I know Mary Malone's house so well, I can see her little kitchen as it was that last day that she ever took any comfort in it. Warm and glowing it was on that raw autumn day, with the cat lying on the choicest spot-Terence's chair before the hearth, and the three little boys sitting about the table. Over their heads hung a new brightly colored print of the Mother of Sorrows, before which Mary sometimes told her beads and prayed that nothing should happen to her man in these troubled times. The little boys were very decorous, for they were waiting for the cakes to be baked, because they had been promised the scrapings.

A cheery little kitchen, but Mary Malone kept running out of it, risking a cold in her head and the burning of the cakes in order to look down to the end of the village street. For there, perhaps every half hour, Terence could be seen, pausing at the end of his beat, giving her the assurance that for yet one more half hour he was safe.

What was in Terence's mind I knew, for the last time I saw him he said to me:

"I never know when I look at my little lads lying

asleep will I ever see them again in this world. I try always to get out of the house without telling Mary good-by, and whenever I come home she begins crying and bawling. I never know when I walk down the street will I ever walk back along it. I don't expect to be shot by a man who knows me. Sure, I have mended the bicycle of every fellow in the place that has a bicycle, and done many another neighborly turn to the rest. No, I don't expect to be shot by a man who knows me, but some one may come in from another county and put a bullet through me. I love my life like any other, and I tell you that if I could have foreseen this time I would have chosen some other job."

The last time Terence walked his beat, the last time Mary waited for him, twilight was drawing down and the wind was blowing in chill from the sea. She was just able to make out the tall, broad figure sauntering up slowly, swinging a baton. There came the sudden sharp crack of a rifle, and Mary Malone's husband fell, shot dead.

One shot, one instant of time, and life in that little

village had changed for
scores of people. When
neighbors carried home the
body of Terence Malone
the cat still lay before the
hearth, the ruddy light
played on
on the painted
grief of the Lady of Sor-
rows, the children still
waited eagerly for the
browning cakes - but
everything else had
changed. Mary stood over
her man in still grief,
while the two elder boys
cried noisily, and little
Shamus said that dad was
only asleep and that it
would be safe to go out
and play because the
creameries or any houses
would not be burned till
night. Wasn't it always
night when places were
burned and people were
killed?

"Oh, hush!" screamed Mary Malone's old mother. "God help us, what a world, when, a good man lies dead doing his duty as he seen it, and the very childher talk of burning and murdering. And now the wake to be held, and the heavy price everything is, and poor Mary with this sorrow on her."

So the cakes Mary Malone had baked for her husband's supper were used at his wake. The little earthen pig where the children kept their pennies was broken open to help pay for the whisky and other refreshments. That night, as the dead man lay in the little front parlor, his friends, huddled together in the little house, forgot him as they peered out of the shuttered windows at a reddened sky.

"What is it that's burning at all?" they whispered. "Is it the creamery that the crown forces have set on fire, or is it the police barracks that the Sinn Fein have set on fire? No, 'tis the creamery!"

And Mary Malone, articulate by this time, mourned for her dead Terence and cursed the Sinn Fein with all the wild Irish eloquence that has come down to her through the veins of countless forbears. When her throat ached with weariness, she cried quietly, thinking of her little boys that had lost their chance

of an education, careless, poor soul, of the fact that, through the burning of the creamery by the crown forces or Black and Tans, many other children would have their futures crippled.

UT in the west of Ireland, in a region that has given much poetry and beauty to the world, stands the cottage of Malachy Quinn, close to the Kiltartan Road. A clean, bare little place, set in a bare, clean yard. There are no trees, except a widely separated row on the other side of the road. About the place is a low stone wall. On an afternoon in November, Eileen Quinn, the young wife of Malachy, sat there waiting for her husband to come home from the town.

She was in a particularly happy mood. Indeed, she was always happy because Malachy was a good husband and a devoted one; he had taken her in the teeth of his family, who thought he should have made a grander match, and he had never regretted his choice. They had prospered. They had added this and that article for the farm and the house to mark the milestones in the four years of their married life. They had three little children, and the spring would have brought them the fourth. Eileen's twenty-three years of life had been triumphant.

On this afternoon she was particularly content because everything was ready for St. Colum's Day, and that was more than any of the other farmers about had to their credit. In this part of the west the people try to get all of their work done before the famous "pattern" day of St. Colum, when everyone goes to the church and makes a pilgrimage to St. Colum's holy well, to pray for the success of the crops during the coming year and for the welfare of those one loves. Malachy and Eileen had their grain threshed and their potatoes dug. Nothing was before them for the year except the care of the cattle. Eileen could afford to sit in the sunshine on the low stone wall, with her youngest child in her arms, and watch the scant life on the road and wait for Malachy to come home.

I had noted casually that cottage of Malachy Quinn's, for it is not far from the home of my friend, an Irishwoman much beloved in America. But the little place took on a fresh, vivid life for me when my friend's maid, that knew Eileen Quinn as a baby, took up the tale of her life and showed me in her words the girl sitting on the wall, the baby in her arms. (Continued on page 24)

I

HAVE just shaken the dust of La Hoya, Cal., from my feet, and I am carrying a triumphant message for the friends of Chicken Johnny Windle. "Tell 'em," said Johnny, shaking my hand in the railroad station-the new railroad station, with La Hoya spelled out on the lawn in red and blue flowers-"tell 'em I am sitting on the world. I've got more dough than Rockefeller's head plumber."

And, figuratively speaking, so he is and so he has. Mr. Windle is fixed, as the saying is, pretty. After a long spell of conspicuous poverty and inaction and the dull despair of age, Chicken Johnny Windle is now basking among the goods of the world, including a new plush hat with a ribald band on it and a snappy suit of mail-order clothes which can be seen two miles through a south California fog.

He has purchased for himself and Ernie a Swiss chalet type of house two blocks distant from the Soldiers' Home, and I was with him the afternoon he made the down payment upon his new automobile, which is a small limousine containing all the little luxuries and comforts needed by an elderly gentle

Windle he was as broke as the Eighteenth Amendment and twice as gloomy and, by the way, he is and has been designated as Chicken Johnny Windle ever since his unfortunate experience with the Montana ranch.

That incident takes one back to the days of the first Grover Cleveland administration and has nothing to do with the present facts, and chickens are, or perhaps is, the one subject in the known world upon which Mr. Windle will not discourse.

At the age of seventy, the old gentleman gathered up his lares and penates and started slowly west from Colorado, casting an eye about for a soft spot upon which to light and presenting the appearance of a man who has been licked by circumstances. After fifty years of ups and down, it became all downs, and with little pug-nosed Ernie on the day coach seat at his side, Chicken Johnny Windle kissed a fare-thee-well to the Central West and faded into the land of the setting sun. The end of that journey was La Hoya, where I met him.

attending the Boys' Military School and contemplates matrimony. Things are indeed elegant with the Windle family, which consists of Johnny and Ernie, and the famous Windle whiskers have been trimmed until only a foot or so remains to waggle in the soft sea breeze.

The last time the public heard about Chicken John

with a white stucco hotel, a Soldiers' Home, and a marble bank. Auto stages carrying forty persons roar into town every so often and draw up magnificently in front of Nichols's Inn. The town is pronounced La Hoya, but is spelled otherwise, having come along down from the old Spanish word meaning a mighty slick spot. It is cuddled away in

one of Nature's cozy corners on the edge of the balmy Pacific. Nine miles to the south is the Mexican line, across which they smuggle the opium and the more modern hooch, and just over the boundary is the race track at Tia Juana. Chicken Johnny selected La Hoya, as anyone can see, because his life had been lived on race tracks.

Now and then this latter town has been referred to as the Mentone of America by bright-eyed lady tourists who have never been to Mentone. On a summer's afternoon Chicken Johnny Windle descended upon the village, with Ernie tagging at his heels. They paused in front of the Soldiers' Home, put down their bags, and surveyed the scene. "Looks like a nice little town," Johnny remarked. "They only got one movie," Ernie answered. "I hate towns where they only got one movie."

However, Ernie's criticism was of no importance, because La Hoya is rapidly putting on airs, and is getting farther every day from the times when the folks wore red suspenders and shaved on Saturday only. In La Hoya you will now find all the metropolitan conveniences expected of any brisk, up-todate community. They have an Art Society that meets on Tuesdays, and bronze weighing machines that refuse to work for a nickel. The mail is delivered twice a day, and the public library is in charge of Mrs. Furness, one of the most refined and literary women in California. Of course La Hoya once was a slow town. If you fell in a trance in front of the post office on Wednesday, they would probably find you Saturday, but this condition has changed. Now that they have the Soldiers' Home, things have speeded up.

Within a week, the two remaining members of the Windle clan rented a cottage on Beacon Street, facing the Soldiers' Retreat, and presently Chicken Johnny was recognized in the village as an elderly gentleman who had retired. Most old gentlemen who retire from active pursuits at least have some bonds or rentable real estate, but not Mr. Windle. His

total resources consisted of Ernie. The boy was expected to find a job over at Tia Juana.

In the palmy days of horse racing in America, John Windle was a noted figure. He owned such horses as Break o' Day and Peter Piper, besides many others which I have forgotten, although he told me about them four hundred times. His colors had flashed into the home stretch of many a famous track, and at the beginning of the century Johnny was rated as a rich man. However, John Windle was a natural gambler. The comparative speed of moving horses interested him and caused him to wager money, and in the end the bookmaking fraternity laid Johnny by the heels. Then he began the long slide down the hill. The years came on faster than ever, and presently Chicken Johnny brought up in La Hoya, with nothing but memories of the track and little Ernie. The rest of the Windle tribe was dead.

This grandson was a restless and red-headed runt with a receding forehead and a vacuous grin, weighing, as a neighbor said, "ninety pounds after a hearty meal." Being a blood relation of Johnny, he naturally turned to the race track, where he found employment as an exercise boy. He even rode in a few races, without covering himself with glory. His precarious wage constituted the sole income at the time the two of them drifted into La Hoya, and this was the whole story until the circumstances surrounding the arrival of Avalon, the Horse. I learned all about Avalon. So did everyone else who could understand English or make anything out of the sign language.

HERE is a fast interurban line between La Hoya

it interesting to visit the track and watch them run. There was no profit or loss in these adventures, because Chicken Johnny generally had his car fare and the price of a sandwich, but he was still interested, and especially on those rare afternoons when some ill-advised owner employed Ernie to climb aboard a horse and try to win.

Ernie never did win, but he appeared to be trying. This harmless existence continued for some time. Ernie's earnings were barely enough for the rent and the board bill. And then Chicken Johnny and his grandson returned to La Hoya, not on the inter

urban, as was his wont, but riding the high and precarious seat of a sulky. Attached to this vehicle, and drawing it along the road with a calm and unhurried stride, was a dun-colored horse with high hip bones and a watery eye.

Edwin Hickson, the Cash Butcher, next to the Gem Palace Cinema, was the first to discover the spectacle, whereat he laid down his cleaver with an expression of vast amazement and hurried into the road. Tom Rorahack came out of his shop, carrying an unfinished shoe in his hand, and stared, and in no time a little group had surrounded Chicken Johnny. It was the town's first peep at Avalon, the Horse.

"Where did you get the crow bait?" demanded the day telegraph operator, who had let the telegram business go to pot for the time being.

"Never mind," replied Johnny. "This here is a race horse, son. He don't look any too good, but he's a race horse, and don't make any mistake about that."

"What's his name?" the operator asked.

"Avalon," said Johnny. "His sire was Brier Weed, and I know all about him."

"You mean he's a regular race horse-like they have at Tia Juana?" Hickson asked. "Go on."

Mr. Windle's feelings being wounded by the snickers of an ignorant populace, he slapped Avalon with the reins and rode leisurely on. Ernie sat by his side and grinned at the townsfolk. They passed in state by the Soldiers' Home and turned into their own front yard, and from that afternoon Avalon took up his residence in the garage behind the house. He became an important part of the Windle establishment, and each morning Johnny hitched him to the sulky and drove him tenderly around town, keeping off the roads used by the automobiles. And no one ever saw Avalon moving rapidly. He either walked or moved at a leisurely lope.

As I said, the abode of the Windles lay across the highway from the Soldiers' Home, and on the second day of his residence Chicken Johnny strolled over to the campus and sat in with the wrinkled gentle

men who went out one morning in 1861 and saved the nation. There were benches and tables under the pepper trees, and the warriors of another day smoked their pipes and kept the noble art of conversation from perishing in California.

Chicken Johnny joined them, and in no time at all he was one of the boys. True, John had not fit and bled during those four years, because he had been otherwise occupied, but for every glowing tale they told, and they told many, Chicken Johnny came back with an equally amazing yarn. They discussed heroic conduct under fire. Johnny related miracle stories of track and paddock, and about 40 per cent of the discussion was truth.

There were four hundred in the home. Five of them were inseparables and never quarreled among themselves, and some cynical creature had named these the Death Watch.

This little coterie of former warriors consisted of Abner Fields, Ritchie Woodman, John Toomey, August Ledert, and Pat Grogan, and the Government knows all about them and how they saved the Union, with some superficial assistance from Abraham Lincoln.

VERY afternoon, in decent weather, the Death

Ewatch site at a particular table, and not a man

of them was younger than sixty-eight. I believe the total existence of the group, including Johnny when he came, was four hundred and twentyfive years, but they were not a feeble and listless crowd of old men. They were surprisingly active and full of argument, no matter what the topic. After talking with them all day, Chicken Johnny would saunter across to his home, and the Death Watch would reluctantly retire. Ernie cooked the meals in the little cottage, and so things went, easy and undisturbed. Of course there was very little money in the Windle household, and likewise the Death Watch never suffered from an excess of wealth.

Then came the sudden and amazing incident of the sulky and the horse with the four white feet and the watery eye. The Death Watch called on Chicken

Johnny the very next morning and gathered around Avalon in the garage.

"How come you to get him?" Mr. Woodman inquired.

Pat Grogan walked slowly around the so-called racing horse, and the other critics looked at him in solemn silence.

"He was give to me," Johnny explained, rubbing the dust off Avalon's withers. "At least, as you might say, he was give to me. I met a man named Joe Davis, and Joe's owed me some money since I had them horses in Chicago. Joe's just as bad off as he ever was, but he happened to own Avalon this season, so when I spoke to him about that money, he says: 'Well, how about you taking Avalon?' and that's how it come."

"He must have owed you seven dollars," Pat Grogan remarked.

"No," said Johnny, "the joke's on Joe. This here is a race horse. Nobody can fool me about Avalon, because I know him. I know all his tricks and what was the matter with him."

"He's kind of bony," August Ledert admitted. "He sticks out a good deal for a horse."

"Why wouldn't he?" Johnny demanded. "Why wouldn't he? Right now he's run down. He's always been run down, and he ain't earned a thin dime in four years. But, just the same, Joe Davis handed me a race horse, and don't you forget it. This here is the greatest mudder in the world." "Mudder?" they said inquiringly..

"Sure," Johnny explained. "He runs in the mud better than he runs on dry land. He's a muddin' fool, and I know it and nobody else knows it."

"Well, why don't they?" Pat asked. "If you know it, why don't they know it?"

"Because Avalon's been bad in his wind right along. He's never been right, so when they run him on a dry track, he couldn't win on account of the track; and when he starts in the mud, he can't win because of his wind."

"And yet you claim he's a race horse," commented Mr. Fields. "Seems to me he's more of an invalid." "Yes," said Johnny, "but here's the point: Avalon

never done anything since he started running, on either wet or dry tracks. But you wait. Just wait and see what I do with him in the next six months or so. I've got a scheme to knock 'em dead."

"Knock who dead?" some one inquired.

"The books-the books," Johnny said impatiently. "We're going to go over there some day and hang them thieves up and peel their hide off by the foot. But not until Avalon gets to feeling right. And not until that clay track is so deep with mud that you could drown a giraffe in front of the grand stand."

HIS conversation was more or less vague to the

cern. And, as the weeks went by, the old lads gradually saw the whole plot. It was to be a concerted attack upon the conscienceless bookmakers, and it appeared that Mr. Windle offered them a part in it. Among the other four hundred bachelors in the home there was a good deal of cackling comment over Johnny Windle and his horse. Likewise the townsfolk indulged in open joking when Avalon passed by, but the old man ignored it. He knew what he knew.

Of course the facts about Avalon were unknown in La Hoya, which is not and never was a sporting community. According to the records, the written history of the track, Avalon was a yellow dog. I glanced over a pile of ancient form charts, assisted by Mr. Windle, and it occurred to me that whenever Avalon had started

with one leg sort of curled up under him. He looked like a horse that is perfectly satisfied with things as he finds them. True, he was a bit bony, but all race horses seem bony to the eye of the inexperienced.

"When he's ripe," said Johnny, laying his hand on my shoulder, "I'll let you know. It's some day next spring, and if you want easy money, you follow me over to Tia Juana that day. I'm going to bust them guys good."

"The bookies?"

"Yes, the bookies. They been robbing me for twenty years, and they pretty near got me, but not quite. I'm going over there and clean 'em."

As the summer wore on, the Death Watch learned a great deal about horse racing. Chicken Johnny, sitting under a tree, with his pipe burning briskly, and the five musketeers gathered about him, told them to be patient and to wait for spring, when the rains fell upon Tia Juana and converted it into a broad circle of sticky clay.

"Then," said Johnny warmly, tamping down his pipe and beaming at his comrades, "we'll start this here Avalon of ours, and we'll be rich."

"Who will?" Abner Fields asked.

"All of us," Johnny answered. "You and me and all of us."

"How do we do it?"

"Listen," he continued, glancing about the intent circle, "you get your pension money every month, don't you?" They nodded. "We'll bet your money.

"I heard about such things," remarked John Toomey. "The week after I enlisted in sixty-one-" And then followed a narrative that consumed the rest of the afternoon.

UTUMN came on with its fleecy clouds, and pres

Aently "winter" was at hand, which in La Hoya

means the rains. A La Hoya winter is something that would cause a Maine farmer to chuckle unrestrainedly, for the flowers bloom with increasing ardor, everything gets a bit greener, and the Pacific breezes are more languorous than ever. The daily discussion under the campus trees continued, and when the moist weather set in permanently, the Death Watch congregated in Fitch's Tobacco Store.

"Yes," said Abner, one of the wet afternoons, "but there's one thing you never mention, Johnny. Supposing Avalon don't run as fast as you expect? How about some other horse winning this race?"

"It can't be," Johnny declared firmly. "I'm waiting for mud-plenty of mud. Ernie's had Avalon over at the track three times the last month, and the way he goes round is a caution. He's all healed up, and when the mud gets deep enough, there ain't anything on legs can hang onto him."

The Death Watch listened and believed. They began practicing small economies, so that there would be dollars to wager when the time came. As the rainy season grew more rainy, interest in Avalon increased. Other old gentlemen in the home

It was over a year since the dun-colored invalid had tested his strength and speed in contest with other horses. It was on a northern track, and he had finished ninth in a field of ten, all of them animals without distinction or any great speed.

"They laid a hundred to one against him, and there wasn't a dollar bet," said Johnny, pawing at his whiskers. "He finished just before dark, which was what you might expect. He's been up north, where it's cold and hard on lungs. This here south California air is going to fix him, just like it fixes the one-lung tourists."

On the occasion of this conversation Johnny was leaning out of the ancient sulky on the main street of La Hoya, and Avalon was standing perfectly still,

were cordially invited to participate in the proposed slaughter of the bookies, but they firmly backed off. They said they knew about horse racing. Not only was it immoral, but you lost your money, and when you get twentyfour dollars a month from a good, reliable government, you are unquestionably a lunatic if you risk it on a horse; and especially if you go to betting on a nag that looks like he's going to fall apart on the pavement.

Meanwhile, Avalon seemed to be doing well enough. Johnny drove him slowly to the sulky, and at intervals Ernie took him to the track and speeded him. The old man surveyed these practice runs and grinned contentedly. Avalon's invalid days were apparently over, and there was nothing to do now but wait for the mud. In La Hoya the residents knew of the proposed venture, and smiled tolerantly. They said that Chicken Johnny was a foolish old man. But day by day the Death Watch held to its faith.

OR five weeks the

Fokies wept and Tia

Juana became a sea of mud. The track at Tia Juana is a sort of mixture of clay and adobe, and when it is sufficiently dampened it resembles a skillful blending of molasses and warm tar. No horse can go through it at terrific speed, except a natural-born mudder. "Now," said Johnny, standing on the porch of the home and watching the rain with a satisfied smile, "we're coming right along. We're going to start soon."

"And we better win," remarked Abner Fields. "We can't afford to lose that pension money."

Abner was always the one who held to doubts. He had a few misgivings, but the others pointed out that John Windle was a man of his word. Then came the morning of definite announcement. Johnny splashed across the road to the home and notified the Death Watch that (Continued on page 26)