of 23 had been wrongly served, 20 were proposed to be erected on sites not adjoining a public road, and no necessity had been shown for erecting 40 of the others.  He accordingly recommended that only 32 be allowed to be erected!  For a small town like Tralee this proposition to put up 196 buildings at the public expense where only 32 were needed is not bad.  It has the right old Tammany Ring smack, and would have commanded, I am sure, the patronising approval of the late Mr. Tweed.

I mentioned it to-night at the County Club, when a gentleman said that this morning at Macroom a serious “row” had occurred between the local Board of Guardians there and a great crowd of labourers.  The labourers thronged the Board-room, demanding the half-acre plots of land which had been promised them.  The Guardians put them off, promising to attend to them when the regular business of the meeting was over.  So the poor fellows were kept waiting for three mortal hours, at the end of which time they espied the elected Nationalist members of the Board subtly filing out of the place.  This angered them.  They stopped the fugitives, blockaded the Board-room, and forced the Guardians to appoint a committee to act upon their demands.

It is certainly a curious fact that, so far, in Ireland I have seen no decent cottages for labourers, excepting those put up at their own expense on their own property by landlords.

I dined to-night at the County Club with Captain Plunkett, a most energetic, spirited, and well-informed resident magistrate, a brother of the late Lord Louth,—­still remembered, I dare say, at the New York Hotel as the only Briton who ever really mastered the mystery of concocting a “cocktail,”—­and an uncle of the present peer.  We had a very cheery dinner, and a very clever lawyer, Mr. Shannon, gave us an irresistible reproduction of a charge delivered by an Irish judge famous for shooting over the heads of juries, who sent twelve worthy citizens of Galway out of their minds by bidding them remember, in a case of larceny, that they could not find the prisoner guilty unless they were quite sure “as to the animus furandi and the asportavit.”

Saturday, Feb. 25.—­I had an interesting talk this morning at the County Club with a gentleman from Limerick on the subject of “boycotting.”  I told him what I had seen at Edenvale of the practice as applied to a forlorn and helpless old woman, for the crime of standing by her “boycotted” son.  “You think this an extreme case,” he said, “but you are quite mistaken.  It is a typical case certainly, but it gives you only an inadequate idea of the scope given to this infernal machinery.  The ‘boycott’ is now used in Ireland as the Inquisition was used in Spain,—­to stifle freedom of thought and action.  It is to-day the chief reliance of the National League for keeping up its membership, and squeezing subscriptions out of the people.  If you want proof of this,”