Ballyragget itself is a brisk little market town, the American influence showing itself here, as in so many other places, in such trifles as the signs on the shops which describe them as "stores." My salmon-fishing companion put me down at the station and went off to the river, which flows through the town, and is here a swift and not inconsiderable stream.
An hour in the train took me to Kilkenny, where I met by appointment several persons whom I had been unable to see during my previous visit in March.
These gentlemen, experienced agents, gave me a good deal of information as to the effect of the present state of things upon the "_moral_" of the tenantry in different parts of Ireland.

On one estate, for example, in the county of Longford, a tenant has been doing battle for the cause of Ireland in the following extraordinary fashion.
He held certain lands at a rental of L23, 4s.

Being, to use the picturesque language of the agent, a "little good for tenant," he fell into arrears, and on the 1st of May 1885 owed nearly three years' rent, or L63, 12s., in addition to a sum of L150 which he had borrowed of his amiable landlord three or four years before to enable him to work his farm.

Of this total sum of L213, 12s.

he positively refused to pay one penny.