"What subtle associations have you already established in Ireland ?" "Let me see," she responded thoughtfully; "the list is not a long one.
Limerick and Carrickmacross for lace, Shandon for the bells, Blarney and Donnybrook for the stone and the fair, Kilkenny for the cats, and Balbriggan for the stockings." "You are sordid this morning," reproved Salemina; "it would be better if you remembered Limerick by the famous siege, and Balbriggan as the place where King William encamped with his army after the battle of the Boyne." "I've studied the song-writers more than the histories and geographies," I said, "so I should like to go to Bray and look up the Vicar, then to Coleraine to see where Kitty broke the famous pitcher; or to Tara, where the harp that once, or to Athlone, where dwelt Widow Malone, ochone, and so on; just start with an armful of Tom Moore's poems and Lover's and Ferguson's, and, yes," I added generously, "some of the nice moderns, and visit the scenes they've written about." "And be disappointed," quoth Francesca cynically.

"Poets see everything by the light that never was on sea or land; still I won't deny that they help the blind, and I should rather like to know if there are still any Nora Creinas and Sweet Peggies and Pretty Girls Milking their Cows." "I am very anxious to visit as many of the Round Towers as possible," said Salemina.

"When I was a girl of seventeen I had a very dear friend, a young Irishman, who has since become a well-known antiquary and archaeologist.

He was a student, and afterwards, I think, a professor here in Trinity College, but I have not heard from him for many years." "Don't look him up, darling," pleaded Francesca.

"You are so much our superior now that we positively must protect you from all elevating influences." "I won't insist on the Round Towers," smiled Salemina, "and I think Penelope's idea a delightful one; we might add to it a sort of literary pilgrimage to the homes and haunts of Ireland's famous writers." "I didn't know that she had any," interrupted Francesca.
This is a favourite method of conversation with that spoiled young person; it seems to appeal to her in three different ways: she likes to belittle herself, she likes to shock Salemina, and she likes to have information given her on the spot in some succinct, portable, convenient form.
"Oh," she continued apologetically, "of course there are Dean Swift and Thomas Moore and Charles Lever." "And," I added "certain minor authors named Goldsmith, Sterne, Steele, and Samuel Lover." "And Bishop Berkeley, and Brinsley Sheridan, and Maria Edgeworth, and Father Prout," continued Salemina, "and certain great speech-makers like Burke and Grattan and Curran; and how delightful to visit all the places connected with Stella and Vanessa, and the spot where Spenser wrote the Faerie Queene." "'Nor own a land on earth but one, We're Paddies, and no more,'" sang Francesca.