“We hain’t Irish!”

And I sez kinder short, “Id’no as we’re Alps.”  But I didn’t argy there wuz so many folks round, wimmen have to choke off time and agin and conceal their shagrin’ and their pardner’s actin’.

Miss Huff had told me a lot about it.  She said they had a real House of Parliament and you could drive in jaunting cars through Lake Kilarney region and the rocky road to Dublin that we’ve all hearn about.

Blarney Castle is used here as a theatre with stirring national plays going on and there is an Irish arch over nine hundred years old, and in a village here is an Irish national exhibit together with a Scotch display, laces, linens, carpets, etc., and there is a gallery of famous Irish beauties.  She said it wuz as good as a visit to Ireland to study the country and the looks and ways of the people.

But as I say, Josiah hurried me past the long, many windowed front of the Irish Industrial Exhibit with its gay flags wavin’ out on top bagonin’ us to come in, past the famous St. Lawrence gate, Droggeda, one of the most famous relics in all Ireland, with its tall towers and its noble archway filled with crowds of sightseers, for he had seen right by the side of that gate a big roundin’ entrance arch with the round world poised above it and above the arch in letters as high as he wuz: 

Under and Over the Sea.

And of course he wuz bound to indulge in that luxury.  And it wuz thrillin’ in the extreme though I stood it better than he did.

The first thing you see is a submarine boat, you can see this plain from the Pike and the passengers embarkin’ on it, two hundred and fifty can be carried by this boat at one time, and Josiah led us onto it with a excited linement, but he tried to look brave and fearless.

But the sights we see down there wuz enough to dismay a man weighin’ far more than Josiah.  You could look right out of the boat on the dashin’ waves, water above you and on every side and see the strange monsters of the deep, and the queer marine growths and blossoms.  Imagine seein’ whales up over your head comin’ right towards you, and Id’no but there wuz leviathians, I guess there wuz, they wuz big enough.

Anon you come to the river Seine in Paris and swoop up to the top of Eiffel Tower.  Blandina sez holdin’ onto my tabs, “From the bowels of the earth up to the vaulted heavings!”

I said tabs, but I meant tab, for Josiah had holt of the other with an almost frenzied grasp, and sez he, “Where will we go next, Samantha?”

And I sez, “Id’no, mebby to the moon or Mars.”

And Blandina in trembling axents sez, “I wish I wuz safe at Mars.”

Her ma is old but got her faculties.  And Josiah sez with chatterin’ teeth and quaverin’ voice as he looked down from the dizzy hite onto Paris, “If I git through this alive I shall be glad to tell the brethren about it.”