CHAPTER I

Monday

This has taken everyone by surprise.  It is possible, that, with the exception of their Staff, it has taken the Volunteers themselves by surprise; but, to-day, our peaceful city is no longer peaceful; guns are sounding, or rolling and crackling from different directions, and, although rarely, the rattle of machine guns can be heard also.

Two days ago war seemed very far away—­so far, that I have covenanted with myself to learn the alphabet of music.  Tom Bodkin had promised to present me with a musical instrument called a dulcimer—­I persist in thinking that this is a species of guitar, although I am assured that it is a number of small metal plates which are struck with sticks, and I confess that this description of its function prejudices me more than a little against it.  There is no reason why I should think dubiously of such an instrument, but I do not relish the idea of procuring music with a stick.  With this dulcimer I shall be able to tap out our Irish melodies when I am abroad, and transport myself to Ireland for a few minutes, or a few bars.

In preparation for this present I had through Saturday and Sunday been learning the notes of the Scale.  The notes and spaces on the lines did not trouble me much, but those above and below the line seemed ingenious and complicated to a degree that frightened me.

On Saturday I got the Irish Times, and found in it a long article by Bernard Shaw (reprinted from the New York Times).  One reads things written by Shaw.  Why one does read them I do not know exactly, except that it is a habit we got into years ago, and we read an article by Shaw just as we put on our boots in the morning—­that is, without thinking about it, and without any idea of reward.

His article angered me exceedingly.  It was called “Irish Nonsense talked in Ireland.”  It was written (as is almost all of his journalistic work) with that bonhomie which he has cultivated—­it is his mannerism—­and which is essentially hypocritical and untrue. Bonhomie!  It is that man-of-the-world attitude, that shop attitude, that between-you-and-me-for-are-we-not-equal-and-cultured attitude, which is the tone of a card-sharper or a trick-of-the-loop man.  That was the tone of Shaw’s article.  I wrote an open letter to him which I sent to the New Age, because I doubted that the Dublin papers would print it if I sent it to them, and I knew that the Irish people who read the other papers had never heard of Shaw, except as a trade-mark under which very good Limerick bacon is sold, and that they would not be interested in the opinions of a person named Shaw on any subject not relevant to bacon.  I struck out of my letter a good many harsh things which I said of him, and hoped he would reply to it in order that I could furnish these acidities to him in a second letter.

That was Saturday.