Penelope's Irish Experiences

le time I was

sea, over

to Ireland o

r me, bett

e fut got the fe

in' along in

its aquil th

sweet an' the girl

a O'N

arolan's Pr

world that Salemina, Francesca, a

; but now that I am a matron and Francesca is shortly to be married, it is odd, to say the least, to see us cosily ensconced in a private sitting-room of a Dublin hotel, the table laid for

nd as to which particular one. Memories of her past flirtations, divagations, plans for a life of single blessedness, all conspired to make him incredulous, and the loyal Salemina,

is before we met, a period that we always allude to as the Dark Ages; but no sooner had we arrived in Edinburgh, and no sooner had my hus

ince it is always engaged in nursing its ailing or decrepit relatives. Intellectually it is full of vitality; any mind grows when it is exercised, and the brain that has to settle all its own affairs and all the affairs of its friends and acquaintances could never lack

ch an obvious path to his office and residence that no bereaved person could possibly lose his way, and as a matter of fact no one of them ever does. This special journey of his to America has been made necessary because, first, his cousin's widow has been defrauded of a large sum by her man of business; and second, his college chum and dearest friend has just died in Chicago after appointing him executor of his estate and guardian of his only child. The wording of the will is, 'as a sacred charge and with full power.' Incid

but I love him for it just the same, and

y like characters in fiction, who, having been popular in the first volume, are exploited again and again until their popularity wanes. We are like the Trotty books or the Elsie Dinmore series. England was our first volume, Scotland our second, and here we are, if you please, about to live a third volume in Ireland. We fall in love, we marry and are given in marriage, we promote and take part in international alliances, but when the curtain goes up again, our accumulations, acquisitions-whatever you choose to call them-have disappeared. We are not to the superficial eye the spinste

he replied, "but I

re th

is th

in Scotland-" And here I paused, watching the blush mount rosily to Salemina's grey hair; pink is very becoming to grey, and tha

nking of me as a character in fiction, I shall rebel. I am not the stuff of which heroines are made; besides, I would never

experiences we did not notice them, but they have attained by degrees a sufficient bulk so that

ory, but prophecy. It is one thing to gaze sentimentally at the road you hav

et it, and so have we. Of course she could consult the Bible family record daily, but if she consulted her looking-glass afterward the one impression wou

ikeness has been stamped upon her in some magical way, so that, although she has not lost her own personality, she seems to have added a reflection of his. In the glimpses of herself, her views, feelings, opinions,

allude to Francesca as 'she that was a Monroe'; it is so significant of her present state of absorption. Several times this week I have be

ui

if any

both casually that the building of the Royal Dublin Society is in Kildare Street, just three minutes' from