whole as it comes to him, and writes his account to the sympathetic
Press, which publishes as gospel stories which have not one word of
truth in them. In fact, the term "English tourist" has come to mean
the same as _gobemouche_ in France; and clever Pat knows well enough
that there is not a fly in the whole region of fable which is too
large for the brutal Saxon to swallow. Abject poverty without shoes to
its feet, with only a few rags to cover its unwashed nakedness, and an
unfurnished mud cabin shared with the pigs and poultry for its sole
dwelling-place--abject poverty begs a copper from "his honour" for the
love of God and the glory of the Blessed Virgin, telling meantime a
heartrending story of privation and oppression. Abject poverty points
to all the outward signs and circumstances of its woe; but it forgets
the good stone house in which live the son and the son's wife--the
dozen or more of cattle grazing free on the mountain side--that bit of
fertile land where the very weeds grow into beauty by their
luxuriance--and those quiet hundreds hidden away for the sole pleasure
of hoarding. And the English tourist takes it all in, and blazes out
into wrath against the tyrannous landlord who has reduced an honest
citizen to this fearful state of misery; knowing nothing of the craft
which is known to all the residents round about, and not willing to
believe it were he even told. For the dramatic instinct is strong in
human nature, and in these later days there is an ebullient surplusage
of sympathy which only desires to find an object. Across the Bristol
Channel, the English tourist finds these objects ready-made to his
hand; and the question is still further embroiled, and the light of
truth still more obscured, that a few impulsive, credulous, and
non-judicially-minded young people may find something whereon to
excite their emotions, and give vent to them in letters to the
newspapers when excited.