From Limerick up through Clare, the railway passes along by the river
Fergus, a big tributary of the Shannon. A Clare man informed me that
Clare returned Dan O'Connell to Parliament. He sank his voice into an
emphatic whisper to inform us that Dan was the first Catholic who ever
got into Parliament.
I have been taken for this one and that one since I came to Ireland, and
have been amused or annoyed, as the case may be, but I am totally at a
loss to know whom I resembled or was taken for in the County Clare. A
decent-looking countrywoman shook hands with me, telling me she had seen
me in some part of Clare a month ago, and I had never set foot into the
county until to-day. "You remember me, my lady, I saw you when you
stopped at ----" some whispered name with an O to it. The woman's face
was strangely familiar, but I was on entirely new ground.
There is enchantment in this western country. I was completely
bewildered when a frieze-coated farmer told me, "That was a grand speech
you made at Tuam, and true every word of it." It was a little confusing,
seeing that I have never been in Tuam, or very near it at all.
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