No More Learning

Quand on ouvrit sa porte, on la trouva raide et froide: elle etait
morte de douleur.

Mais la vente de cette ame si adorable dans sa charite fut declaree
nulle par le Seigneur: car elle avait sauve ses concitoyens de la mort
eternelle.

Apres la huitaine, des vaisseaux nombreux amenerent a l'Irlande affamee
d'immenses provisions de grains.

La famine n'etait plus possible. Quant aux marchands, ils disparurent
de leur hotellerie, sans qu'on sut jamais ce qu'ils etaient devenus.

Toutefois, les pecheurs de la Blackwater pretendent qu'ils sont
enchaines dans une prison souterraine par ordre de Lucifer jusqu'au
moment ou ils pourront livrer l'ame de Ketty qui leur a echappe. Je
vous dis la legende telle que je la sais.

--Mais les pauvres l'ont raconte d'age en age et les enfants de Cork et
de Dublin chantent encore la ballade dont voici les derniers couplets:--

Pour sauver les pauvres qu'elle aime
Ketty donna
Son esprit, sa croyance meme;
Satan paya
Cette ame au devoument sublime,
En ecus d'or,
Disons pour racheter son crime
_Confiteor_.

Mais l'ange qui se fit coupable
Par charite
Au sejour d'amour ineffable
Est remonte.
Satan vaincu n'eut pas de prise
Sur ce coeur d'or;
Chantons sous la nef de l'eglise,
_Confiteor_.

N'est ce pas que ce recit, ne de l'imagination des poetes catholiques
de la verte Erin, est une veritable recit de careme?

_The Countess Cathleen_ was acted in Dublin in 1899 with Mr. Marcus St.
John and Mr. Trevor Lowe as the First and Second Demon, Mr.
Valentine
Grace as Shemus Rua, Master Charles Sefton as Teig, Madame San Carola
as Maire, Miss Florence Farr as Aleel, Miss Anna Mather as Oona, Mr.
Charles Holmes as the Herdsman, Mr. Jack Wilcox as the Gardener, Mr.
Walford as a Peasant, Miss Dorothy Paget as a Spirit, Miss M. Kelly as
a Peasant Woman, Mr. T. E. Wilkenson as a Servant, and Miss May Whitty
as the Countess Cathleen. They had to face a very vehement opposition
stirred up by a politician and a newspaper, the one accusing me in
a pamphlet, the other in long articles day after day, of blasphemy
because of the language of the demons in the first act, and because I
made a woman sell her soul and yet escape damnation, and of a lack of
patriotism because I made Irish men and women, who it seems never did
such a thing, sell theirs. The politician or the newspaper persuaded
some forty Catholic students to sign a protest against the play, and a
Cardinal, who avowed that he had not read it, to make another, and both
politician and newspaper made such obvious appeals to the audience to
break the peace, that some score of police[B] were sent to the theatre
to see that they did not. I have, however, no reason to regret the
result, for the stalls, containing almost all that was distinguished
in Dublin, and a gallery of artisans, alike insisted on the freedom of
literature, and I myself have the pleasure of recording strange events.

The play has since been revived in New York by Miss Wycherley, but I
did not see her performance.

* * * * *

_The Land of Heart's Desire. _--This little play was produced at the
Avenue Theatre in the spring of 1894, with the following cast:--Maurteen
Bruin, Mr. James Welch; Shawn Bruin, Mr. A.