The consumption of that article
must be steady and enormous to support them. There is squalor enough to
be seen in the small streets of this town, but that is in every town.
The public road from Ballymena to Grace Hill passes through the Galgorm
estate which passed from the hands of its last lord, through the
Encumbered Estates Court, into the hands of its present proprietor. On
this estate a most wonderful change has been effected, and in a short
space of time to effect so much. During the old _regime_, and the
good old times of absentee landlordism, squalor and misery crept up to
the castle gates. The wretchedness of the tenants could be seen by every
passer-by. The peasantry tell of unspeakable orgies held at the castle
even upon the Sabbath day. The change is something miraculous. The waste
pasture-like demesne is reclaimed and planted. The worst cabins have
entirely disappeared; the rest are improved till they hardly know
themselves.
They match the new cottages for which the proprietor took a prize. These
little homes with their climbing plants, their trim little gardens, look
as if any one might snuggle down in any of them and be content.
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