WHAT’S WRONG WITH THE COUNTRY? I This Christmas, said Desmond, as you know, I went home on vacation. I fell in with a group of old friends; many of them I hadn’t seen for ten years; some had risen in the world since then; some had gone downhill. You know, the usual way, and in the usual way you ponder upon the significance of time and feel damnably reverential and rather frightened and then forget all about it. One wet evening three of us were drinking in Dolan’s back, Ferguson the solicitor, Joyce the stockbroker and myself. Young Dolan too was there. There was a great change in Dolan’s since the old man’s death. On the walls were portraits of actresses, actors and lecturers, the sort of visiting celebrities you find in a small town. And young Dolan was very different to his father. He is a slim, dark, serious lad; his greatest grief that he got no education. The old man had been barely able to write his name, and that same, he used to say, had involved him in more trouble than anything else in his life. Ferguson had spent a week’s holiday in some seaside place in Kerry and was complaining bitterly about the food. With Ferguson it’s always a feast or a famine; either everything, at home and abroad, is marvellous, superb, magnificent, or else it’s going to the devil, and for a week he had been moaning that all through Kerry he could get nothing but bottled coffee and that the natives were savages. ‘What’s wrong with the country,’ he said—I’m hardly likely ever to forget the exact words he used—‘is that we’re so damned lazy and dirty that we never take the trouble to do anything properly.’ ‘I’m afraid I don’t agree with you,’ said Joyce. Joyce is a small, stocky, obstinate fellow with a precise and cynical mind. ‘Oh, my dear man,’ said Ferguson, growing worried, ‘don’t mind the hotels. Just take anything you like. Take the trains—they don’t run up to time. They’re old and dirty and draughty. The buses break down and dump you twenty miles from anywhere without an apology. We put up a bridge and it falls to pieces. Our electrical undertakings produce everything except electricity. It’s no use hiding our weakness. Let us be honest with ourselves. We’re the most backward, ignorant race in Europe.’ ‘I’m not trying to hide anything,’ replied Joyce. ‘I know our faults. I’m as ready to admit them as you are. But I say that what you call a cause is only an effect. You get bad food? I say the fault is your own. Your train is late? I don’t blame the guard or the engine driver. It’s none of their business. I blame no one but the passengers.’ ‘But really, Joyce, old man, really—consider what you’re saying,’ continued Ferguson, who, having no perfect joints in his mind, is easily upset. ‘Do you expect me to run the train? Do you expect me to cook the dinner? For instance, only last week in one of the best hotels in Galway, I asked for cold lamb and ham and instead I got cold beef and mutton. I told the waiter to take it back, and what do you think he brought the second time? Now what do you think?’ ‘I don’t give tuppence what he brought,’ said Joyce with his cold smile. ‘It doesn’t really matter a hang if he brought cold octopus and cabbage. The fault is not the waiter’s but yours. ... I don’t mean that in a personal sense, naturally. It isn’t you alone. It’s the whole people.’ Joyce was getting hotter. ‘It’s this damned moral cowardice of ours. What’s wrong with the country is that the people as a whole suffer from a fundamental weakness of character. Examine your conscience, Ferguson, and you, Desmond, examine yours. How many times have you tolerated this state of affairs rather than make a scene? How many times have you put up with negligence, extortion, lying and impertinence, simply because you couldn’t be bothered seeing the thing through? How many times have you been told to address your complaints to So-and-so? And how many times have you complained?’ ‘You don’t want much,’ grumbled Ferguson. ‘That’s a whole-time job, and what the devil do we have inspectors for if not to see that things are done right?’ ‘It isn’t a whole-time job, Ferguson. If you did it once a day, it would be more than you’d ever need to do. And these things are infectious. When other people see you do it they’ll do it too. It’s only the general atmosphere of moral cowardice that needs to be broken up.’ Before any of us knew where we were we were engaged in a violent argument that went on until closing time, and would have gone on longer but that Ferguson had had an appointment a half-hour previously. II I found myself thinking a good deal of what Joyce had said. I did really examine my conscience and discovered that a good deal of it was true enough. Like many of my contemporaries I had been abominably weak, characterless and afraid to square up to situations. I could not in honesty deny that if there was anything wrong with the country (and everyone seemed to agree that there was) it was almost certainly the moral cowardice he spoke of. But one day, walking into town, I bumped into Monahan. Monahan is a man with a country accent, an expert on business methods and manager of one of our new factories. As usual he was in a hurry and asked me to stroll along with him. ‘I believe,’ he said in his quick, sarcastic way, ‘ye had a great post-mortem on the old country the other night?’ ‘We had,’ I agreed. ‘And Ferguson was there?’ ‘He was.’ ‘And left half an hour late for an appointment?’ ‘So he did. How did you know?” ‘I was the man he had the appointment with,’ said Monahan, chuckling. ‘Oh, I see.’ ‘So ye settled it?’ ‘More or less.’ ‘Joyce spoke well, I believe?’ ‘I never heard him speak better.’ ‘And I’ll guarantee the humour of it didn’t strike any of ye?’ ‘The humour of what?’ ‘It didn’t strike ye as funny to see Fergie diagnosing what was wrong with the country and then going off half an hour late for an appointment?’ ‘I don’t quite see what you mean,’ I said. ‘Sorry I haven’t more time to explain. But, me dear good man, don’t you realise yet that Fergie—and no wan likes Fergie more than I do: I put dozens of jobs in his way—Fergie is simply the typical Irishman. Brilliant, charming, kind, loved by everyone and—absolutely unreliable! From his heart out he’s yours for as long as you have him, but once out of your sight—bah, a black man would do more for you! You meet him at the theatre. He’s falling over. you, he’s so delighted to see you. “You must come home with me and have a drink,” says he. “Just one moment till I say good night to this idiot.” After that you never see him again! He’s off to the other fellow’s house, the fellow he called an idiot. ... Desmond, old boy, surely, surely, as an intelligent man, you realise that what’s wrong with the country is simply that we’re hopelessly unbusinesslike. You write a letter and get no reply. You call. Oh yes, that’ll be all right in a day or two. The moment your back is turned, forgotten, absolutely forgotten! ... Excuse me, me dear fellow,’ he continued feverishly, ‘I have an appointment at three-thirty and it’s wan minute to. But, of course, Downes won’t be there. Downes probably won’t turn up at all. He’ll waste my evening as well as his own. Think of that in terms of hard cash, Desmond; then multiply it by all the unpunctual people in Ireland, and I’ll eat my hat if it doesn’t cost us twenty million a year. And yet people ask what’s wrong with the country!’ That evening I arrived in Dolan’s back to find a crowd before me. The Professor was in the chair. The Professor is a fat man with a considerable capacity for whiskey. Dolon began to speak of our previous discussion and I could see that the Professor did not like at all the idea of anybody discussing anything in his absence. I could see he was preparing to launch out on a disquisition when he was anticipated by a young man sitting on a barrel. The speaker had a thin pale face, rather bloated, with curious hanging jaws and ears pressed close to his head. ‘Now isn’t that amusing? he said with a giggle, looking straight at me. (I had just told them of Monahan’s summing-up.) ‘Isn’t that typical of Monahan? By God, there’s a man, and if energy could be converted into cash, he’d be worth a fortune.’ ‘I don’t see what that has to do with the question,’ said the Professor, clearing his throat. ‘I do,’ said the young man arrogantly. ‘Monahan is a shining example of the type that’s ruining this country, the type that’s always in a hurry, always pulling up the flowers to see how they’re going on. Fellows like that start an industry and expect to get their capital back in six months, and if they don’t, they’re off on a deputation to the Government to say they’re ruined, Not that they’re ever any other way: we all know Monahan is living on charity.’ ‘Give him a chance,’ growled the Professor. ‘He’s only beginning.’ ‘Beginning? That fellow has twenty years of disasters behind him from the day he started the poultry farm and killed the hens in mistake for the cocks. And look at the mess he made of the Fun City. A week ago I was in Kilkenny and found the African Village trying to work its way back to Africa. The Tyrolese Restaurant is probably in the wilds of Donegal and the Waxworks in Kenmare. ... But do you think it deters Monahan? Do you think he’s worried? Not at all. His latest is a daily aeroplane service to Paris.’ ‘There,’ said the Professor firmly (he had been listening with growing disgust), ‘I entirely disagree with you. I’m not saying anything in favour of Monahan. In fact, I consider Monahan a charlatan, a bumptious cheapjack, but all the same he’s the exception. I’m not defending his Fun City either. But all the same it was ridiculed, not for that reason but because it was a new idea. It was unprecedented, that’s why. There’s the real weakness of our people, their slavish respect for tradition and precedent.’ ‘I question that,’ said the young man. ‘It’s obvious,’ replied the Professor coolly. ‘I question it.’ ‘It’s none the less true for that,’ said the Professor, opening another button of his trousers. ‘It’s a fact recognised by all historians. We refused to adopt armour, we wouldn’t live in walled cities, we wouldn’t go to sea, we wouldn’t take up printing; we wouldn’t do any damn thing except what they did in the year One. And we won’t do it now. Monahan wants aeroplanes! Aeroplanes in a country that hasn’t as much as an old ferry-boat of its own!’ ‘There you are. We won’t bother to build the boats because we keep dreaming about aeroplanes.’ ‘But you don’t see the point,’ said the Professor, hammering his glass on the counter. ‘Wake up, man, and use your critical faculty! It’s the difference between black and white. You say the people make a mess of things because they look forward. I tell you it’s because they look back. Think of kilts! And bagpipes! And Irish! And now they want laws to prevent us waltzing, and doing Swedish drill, and some of them would like to revive the Brehon laws! Good God Almighty, ’tis as plain as the nose on your face what’s wrong with the country.’ ‘Now, don’t try to browbeat me,’ said the young man, rising. ‘I’m not trying to browbeat you. I’m trying to knock sense into you.’ ‘You may be a Professor, but the only intelligence this country produced came from outside the universities.’ ‘From outside the universities?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Are you trying to pick a quarrel about the universities now?” At this point Dolan signalled to some friends of the young man. It was some time before they got him out, but in that time he was able to tell the Professor pretty well all he thought of him. He said the Professor’s mind had stopped developing twenty years before, and that whoever had wangled him into the university must have had a taste for archaeology. ‘Now,’ said a teacher called Linehan, as the young man’s parting shot died on our ears, ‘we can talk. Nobody could open his mouth while that fellow was here. ... Professor, take him as my contribution to the discussion.’ ‘Explain yourself, Linehan,’ cried Dolan. ‘He’s my contribution.’ ‘You think he’s what’s wrong with the country?’ ‘I know it, to my sorrow. ... Mind you, I agree with the Professor about the tradition. He’s right, dead right, but it springs from nothing more or less than vanity. Vanity—there’s the national vice.’ ‘And a very interesting contribution too,’ said the Professor. ‘Is somebody going to stand me a drink?’ ‘I will,’ replied Linehan. ‘Good man! So you think it’s vanity?’ ‘I’m certain of it.’ ‘Well, mind you, I’m not. And I’ll tell you why. It’s because vanity is a normal human weakness. The French have it; the Germans think they made the bloody world, and the English aren’t exactly what you’d call retiring. On the other hand, the worship of tradition is abnormal.’ ‘But vanity can become abnormal.’ ‘Yes, but history———’ ‘Oh, you can read history how you like. But even, taking history; why do you think the English laws forbade an Irishman to strut and swagger through an English town? Why did they say _strut_ and _swagger_?’ ‘Propaganda,’ said Dolan firmly. ‘The English were always trying to give us a bad name.’ ‘Propaganda, my bloody eye!’ howled Linehan. ‘’Twas because they had young pups like Foley in their minds. ... ‘Think of our history in the past twenty years. It’s been dictated by personal vanity, nothing else. Look at the Treaty. You’re not going to pretend there was a single principle involved in the Civil War?’ ‘Except what someone said in 1798.’ ‘Window dressing!’ ‘No, it wasn’t. Those fellows really believe that what some idiot said a hundred and fifty years ago is God’s truth. And if they were conceited they wouldn’t be falling back on precedents.’ ‘That’s where you’re wrong,’ put in a tall ugly man with a stormy head of white hair, a straggling moustache and a stutter. ‘The vain man is always a traditionalist. Look at the priests.’ ‘None of your anti-clericalism here, O’Leary!’ said Dolan. ‘Who’s anti-clerical?’ ‘You are.’ ‘One minute, O’Leary,’ said Linehan testily. ‘I want to finish what I was saying.’ ‘But the pair of ye are saying the same thing,’ spluttered O’Leary. ‘He says tradition, you say vanity. It’s only a question of which came first, the chicken or the egg. And anyway, in my opinion ye’re both wrong.’ ‘’Twouldn’t be like you if you hadn’t queer notion.’ ‘Queer notion, is it? Maybe I didn’t tell ye twenty times before what was wrong with the country?’ ‘Go on, Jock, go on and never mind him,’ said Dolan. ‘Dolan, I told you.’ ‘You did, you did, acushla, but never mind. Go on.’ ‘Twenty times over!’ ‘For God’s sake, go on,’ said the Professor. ‘I’m getting mental paralysis, waiting.’ ‘What’s wrong with this country is that the people haven’t learned how to live.’ ‘How do you make that out?’ ‘How do I make it out?’ ‘Almighty God, don’t start again!’ ‘Look round you, man, look round you. We have no arts and crafts; the only people that went to America and didn’t know how to do a single thing with their hands. That’s why we’re detested there.’ ‘But history———!’ ‘Are you back to history again? I suppose history prevents them cooking a dinner or singing a song. ... My dear man, I thought all this out twenty years ago. Now, take a man we were speaking about, Joyce. I don’t deny that Joyce is a clever fellow in his way, but go into his house! Look at his furniture. Awful gilt-framed pictures of swans—’twould give you the horrors. And Joyce is typical of hundreds of thousands of people in Ireland who live in an atmosphere that would drive a Frenchman mad in a week. And what’s the result? They’re all eaten up with dissatisfaction, vanity and envy; they don’t know what’s wrong themselves, but they hate their lives; they don’t believe in anything; they’re restless, and at last they bust out in some crazy bloody racket like the Civil War. Anything to let off steam! The censorship is the sort of thing they do. They simply don’t understand that people need comfort, luxury, spaciousness, and excuse the word—sensuality. Old maids, damned old maids, by Christ.’ ‘Now, Jock, now Jock!’ said Dolan. ‘It’s true.’ ‘It isn’t true.’ ‘A race of old maids,’ repeated O’Leary angrily. ‘Petticoats they should be wearing, instead of trousers. Did I ever tell you the story of Lightning?’ ‘Lightning? Who’s Lightning?’ ‘Lightning is one of my foremen. And we call him Lightning because he’s the slowest bloody animal the Lord God created. Well, one day Lightning was in Folkestone on a holiday and the notion took him to have a look at the sinful country where they invented the Continental Sunday he was after hearing such a lot about. Off with him on a one-day trip to Boulogne, and no sooner was he out of the boat than a bloke comes up with picture postcards—you know the sort. And what does my bold Lightning do? He drew himself up like a man and _Monsieur_, says he politely, _monsieur, je suis Irlandais!_’ When one of the bar hands came to tell Dolan it was time to close he was making a speech and gave the bar hand such a push that he tumbled him over a barrel. At midnight I left half a dozen of them in a little ice-cream shop on the quays, eating fish and chips and still arguing. Maybe I hadn’t a bad head next morning? Because damn the wink of sleep did I get; turning the thing over and over in my mind; at one moment agreeing with Fergie, at the next with Joyce, then with the Professor, Linehan, O’Leary and Foley in turn: and I ended up by evolving theories of my own; theories that seemed so plausible while I was thinking of them that I wanted to get up and find someone to air them to. III The same night the confounded thing popped up again. To escape Dolan’s I went to a party at Ferguson’s. I had scarcely been there ten minutes when someone began to attack the Professor. For the life of him, said Cusack, he couldn’t understand people listening to the Professor—a contemptible type. In spite of his name he wasn’t Irish at all. His father was a Liverpool man, who had to clear back to his native land as a result of some shady business transaction. The Professor himself had been barred from a card school for cheating, and was supposed to have played some particularly shabby trick upon an old maiden aunt, who had brought him up. As for tradition, what was really wrong, according to Cusack, was that there was no tradition at all! Take the Professor himself, doubtfully Irish, knowing nothing of Irish language or literature, and depending for his opinion of it on the work of foreigners. What sort of professor of history was that? Could a country be normal with such an intelligentsia? What was wrong was that we were all living from hand to mouth, our bookshops full of foreign books, and nothing to be seen in theatres and cinemas but foreign plays and pictures. ‘I suppose you’d like us to go back to kilts?’ asked Ferguson. ‘Well, what’s wrong with kilts?” asked the patriot belligerently. ‘If you think I’m going to let my husband go to the office in kilts !’ interrupted Mary Ferguson. ‘And anyway,’ added a fair-haired young man in the corner, ‘tradition is all rot.’ This was a young fellow called Sullivan, who had been educated for the priesthood but had to give it up as the result of a succession of nervous breakdowns. His favourite subject was Thomistic philosophy, and it was said that he couldn’t even put on his hat without satisfying himself of its subsistent reality. ‘Well?’ asked Ferguson. ‘What do _you_ think is wrong with the country?” ‘No established principle of order,’ replied Sullivan promptly. ‘One minute,’ said the traditionalist. ‘I want to sing an Irish song—just to show you what Irish culture is like.’ ‘Irish songs,’ snapped Sullivan, to the relief of everyone, ‘may be very nice—when they’re properly sung, I mean—but they’re no alternative to philosophy, and there’s no evidence that at any time the people of this country bothered their heads with philosophy. And look at the result. Irish history is simply a record of chaos, of defeat after defeat, all because of the lack of one unifying formula, one simple principle of order. Somebody talked about the Civil War a moment ago. Well, consider the Civil War! What was it about? One party declared that the State could not abrogate its sovereignty, that if every soul in Ireland were wiped out it would still continue to exist—an untenable hypothesis that any man with a logical mind could have wiped the floor with in ten minutes cost the country millions of pounds!’ ‘The Civil War was the result of foreign notions,’ growled Cusack. ‘That’s entirely irrelevant,’ snapped Sullivan. ‘There’s not a tittle of evidence that the idea of order ever established itself. ‘Take the public life of the country. You all know it’s rotten with intrigue, corruption, graft and intellectual dishonesty. Men who imagine they’re good Christians lie, cheat and bribe in every position. Why? Because the idea of justice isn’t known to them, that’s why. And we brought our corruption to America with us, and founded ‘Tammany Hall. That’s why our people are detested there.’ ‘O’Leary says it’s because we have no arts and crafts,’ I suggested mildly. ‘Well, you can tell O’Leary from me that he’s wrong.’ ‘Does anyone want tea?’ asked Mrs Ferguson; but by this time everyone was so excited that she was not heard. Ferguson’s young sister and I held an impassioned conversation about the theatre. In a lull, when it seemed that we must have said everything that could be said, my heart sank as a new voice broke in. ‘Surely,’ I heard, ‘the thing goes deeper than that. We don’t pay much attention to ideas; unfortunately that’s true, but isn’t it because of the extraordinary imagination of the people? The real trouble, as I see it, is that the whole country exists in a sort of daydream.’ ‘A daydream, Nagle?’ asked Sullivan politely. ‘Yes, I mean it.’ ‘You call our Tammany Halls a daydream?” ‘No, but———’ ‘Secret societies, public dishonesty, pilfering, lying, murder, a daydream?’ ‘But, damn it, the people aren’t aware of it!’ ‘They come up against it every other day and yet they’re not aware of it?’ ‘They don’t come up against it—that’s the point. They evade it, if you like. They’re not aware of it. They’re still in the twilight of the primitive world. ... And how can you expect them to be interested in abstractions when they’re not even interested in realities? For example, over the August Bank Holiday, I was in a long queue, waiting for a bus. Well, people stepped in just when and where they liked. One bus came, two, three; they filled up and went off and we were just where we began. I started remonstrating, but I saw that no one would back me up. Then I called a policeman, but he only added a few remonstrances of his own and walked away.’ ‘Go on,’ said Sullivan, ‘you’re making out a nice case for me.’ ‘Listen, can’t you? Just at that moment I heard a man behind me speaking. ‘If I won the Sweep,” said he, ‘’tisn’t here I’d be, but driving home in my own car.’ And at that moment it became perfectly plain to me that everyone else in the queue was thinking something of the sort, and that if they had to stand there till morning they’d still be comforting themselves with dreams of what they’d do if only someone left them a legacy.’ I rose. I had had one sleepless night. ‘By the way,’ I said to Ferguson, ‘I’m giving a bachelor party to-morrow evening. Will you come?” ‘Delighted,’ he answered. ‘Who else is coming?” ‘Just a few of the boys. Anderson, the Professor, Joyce—you know them all.’ ‘Oh,’ he said, his face falling, ‘I’m afraid I’ll be———’ ‘Who is it?’ I asked. ‘Not the Professor?’ ‘No.’ ‘Oh, Joyce? Well, I’m sorry, old man, but it’s too late to make alterations.’ I left with a meek-looking man who hadn’t opened his mouth all the evening. It was he who told me what had occurred to estrange two old friends like Joyce and Ferguson. It appeared that as a result of their argument Joyce had reported that Ferguson was intellectually dishonest. ‘And you know,’ added my meek neighbour, ‘personally, what I think is wrong with the country———’ I looked at him in fury. What was wrong with the country according to him was sheer stagnation. Everyone was too provincial. Joyce, Ferguson, the whole lot; it was ten years since any of them had been out of Ireland, and their brains were spoiling for want of fresh contacts. I tried not to listen. I started counting my steps. I counted the stars. At last I stopped dead and begged him for the sake of his dead mother to shut up. He looked staggered. And then, as we were standing under a street lamp, there sailed into view the Professor and Dolan. ‘Where are you two off at this hour of night?’ I asked. ‘He’s looking for a fight,’ said Dolan in a disgusted tone. ‘I am,’ agreed the Professor, who was rather oiled. ‘Who is it now?’ I enquired. ‘O’Leary,’ replied the Professor, ‘that son of a so-and-so, O’Leary. By God, I’ll break his bloody neck when I lay hold of him.’ ‘Get it over before to-morrow night,’ I said. ‘He’s coming to my party too.’ ‘Party!’ he shouted. ‘I’ll go to no party with that would-be gentleman with his posing and his arts and crafts. Because I wouldn’t agree with his preposterous notions about what was wrong with the country. ... Christ!’ he shouted, throwing down his bowler and resting his heel on it, ‘I never said that what was really wrong with the country was that no one had sense enough to cut O’Leary’s throat in the cradle.’ ‘Yes, yes, yes,’ said Dolan. ‘Come on home!’ ‘Desmond, did you hear him? The people didn’t know how to live. Did you hear him?’ ‘Of course he heard him,’ said Dolan. ‘Come on now, like a good chap!’ ‘A lot he knew about living and his mother an apple-woman at the foot of Bindon Street. ... And ’tisn’t that at all—oh, Christ, ’tisn’t that, but the airs he puts on, carrying round a bloody Greek play that he can’t read a word of, and stuttering about people not knowing how to behave like gentlemen.’ ‘Yes, yes,’ I said, ‘Dolan’s right. You’d better go home.’ ‘And Liebfraumilch, Desmond. Liebfraumilch!’ ‘Of course, of course!’ ‘Pretending he can’t stomach porter!’ ‘For God Almighty’s sake,’ said Dolan imploringly, ‘take his arm. I’m trailing round after him for two solid hours.’ ‘Be Jases,’ said the Professor, driving his heel through his bowler hat, ‘if there’s one thing I can’t stand ’tis anti-clericals. I’d crucify every bloody man that opened his mouth against religion. I would, be God, I’d crucify him!’ I helped to take the Professor home. And do you know? all the way back, every five minutes or so, I found myself saying ‘What’s wrong with the country?’ and an abyss opened in my mind and I had the sort of sick feeling you get sometimes after a heavy feed. I kicked my toe against a flagstone and my first thought was ‘What’s wrong with the country? I bashed my face against a gas-lamp and asked ‘What’s wrong with the country?’ I lost my way in a network of dark alleys and muttered ‘What’s wrong with the country?’ Then as I was getting into bed I thought of Sullivan, the Thomist, and how he couldn’t put on his shoes without wondering about their subsistent reality, and felt I was on the point of a nervous breakdown myself. Next evening while I was waiting for my guests I prepared a little speech. This time I wasn’t going to allow myself to be upset. I made that speech to the wall fifty times if I made it once, and each time it grew more and more impassioned. Then I looked at the clock. I realised suddenly that I might go on making it; no one was coming. But by this time the theme was flaming in my mind, and I put on my hat and rushed down to Dolan’s. Though it was within ten minutes of closing time there was no one in the back but a coal-heaver. ‘Well?” I asked Dolan. ‘Well?” he replied, rather unpleasantly, I thought. ‘I was supposed to be giving a party———’ I began. ‘And no one turned up!’ ‘Exactly.’ ‘Well, it’s much the same here.’ ‘Oh!’ I exclaimed. ‘And it all hinges about what Linehan really said Nagle’s sister was doing with the soldier.’ ‘Oh!’ I repeated. ‘And furthermore, Desmond, for your information, this time it’s for good, so far as I’m concerned. ... This decent man,’ pointing to the coal-heaver, ‘is taking over possession of the back, and the first man that tries to start an intellectual conversation is going to get swiped. ... I tell you, Desmond, one time I used to think it was a fine thing to have brains and be gassing away about Suetonius and Sybarius, and the divil knows what else, and I used to read all the books them goms gave me till I had me misfortunate head moidhered, but I’m after coming to the conclusion that me father was right, and that what’s really wrong with this country is that there’s too much brains in it, and it have the country as moidhered as meself. Isn’t that right, Packey?’ Packey showed his teeth in a sinister smile and raised his glass. ‘Ah, ’tis yourself have the language, Mr Dolan.’ And that (added Desmond) was my experience, and this year I’m taking my holidays in Paris. Because what’s really wrong with this country is that there’s too much old talk in it. IV ‘Yes,’ I said when Desmond had spun his yarn (more or less as I have set it out in my own words), ‘that rather describes an experience of my own. But do you really think we talk so much? Now, I should have said that what was wrong with the country : I hesitated when I saw the curious look that came into Desmond’s eyes. ‘What’s wrong with the country,’ I repeated weakly, but I could not continue. ‘What’s wrong with the country———’