Penelopes Irish Experiences | Page 5

heroines
are made; besides, I would never appear in anything so cheap and
obvious as a series, and the three-volume novel is as much out of
fashion as the Rollo books."
"But we are unconscious heroines, you understand," I explained.
"While we were experiencing our experiences we did not notice them,
but they have attained by degrees a sufficient bulk so that they are
visible to the naked eye. We can look back now and perceive the path
we have travelled."
"It isn't retrospect I object to, but anticipation," she retorted; "not
history, but prophecy. It is one thing to gaze sentimentally at the road
you have travelled, quite another to conjure up impossible pictures of
the future."
Salemina calls herself a trifle over forty, but I am not certain of her age,
and think perhaps that she is uncertain herself. She has good reason to
forget it, and so have we. Of course she could consult the Bible family
record daily, but if she consulted her looking-glass afterward the one
impression would always nullify the other. Her hair is silvered, it is true,
but that is so clearly a trick of Nature that it makes her look younger
rather than older.
Francesca came into the room just here. I said a moment ago that she
was the same old Francesca, but I was wrong; she is softening,
sweetening, expanding; in a word, blooming. Not only this, but Ronald
Macdonald's likeness has been stamped upon her in some magical way,
so that, although she has not lost her own personality, she seems to

have added a reflection of his. In the glimpses of herself, her views,
feelings, opinions, convictions, which she gives us in a kind of solution,
as it were, there are always traces of Ronald Macdonald; or, to be more
poetical, he seems to have bent over the crystal pool, and his image is
reflected there.
You remember in New England they allude to a bride as 'she that was' a
so-and-so. In my private interviews with Salemina I now habitually
allude to Francesca as 'she that was a Monroe'; it is so significant of her
present state of absorption. Several times this week I have been obliged
to inquire, "Was I, by any chance, as absent-minded and dull in
Pettybaw as Francesca is under the same circumstances in Dublin?"
"Quite."
"Duller if anything."
These candid replies being uttered in cheerful unison I change the
subject, but cannot resist telling them both casually that the building of
the Royal Dublin Society is in Kildare Street, just three minutes' from
O'Carolan's, and that I have noticed it is for the promotion of
Husbandry and other useful arts and sciences.
Chapter II.
Irish itineraries.
'And I will make my journey, if life and health but stand, Unto that
pleasant country, that fresh and fragrant strand, And leave your boasted
braveries, your wealth and high command, For the fair hills of holy
Ireland.'
--Sir Samuel Ferguson.
Our mutual relations have changed little, notwithstanding that
betrothals and marriages have intervened, and in spite of the fact that
Salemina has grown a year younger; a mysterious feat that she has
accomplished on each anniversary of her birth since the forming of our

alliance.
It is many months since we travelled together in Scotland, but on
entering this very room in Dublin, the other day, we proceeded to show
our several individualities as usual: I going to the window to see the
view, Francesca consulting the placard on the door for hours of table
d'hote, and Salemina walking to the grate and lifting the ugly little
paper screen to say, "There is a fire laid; how nice!" As the matron I
have been promoted to a nominal charge of the travelling arrangements.
Therefore, while the others drive or sail, read or write, I am buried in
Murray's Handbook, or immersed in maps. When I sleep, my dreams
are spotted, starred, notched, and lined with hieroglyphics, circles,
horizontal dashes, long lines, and black dots, signifying hotels, coach
and rail routes, and tramways.
All this would have been done by Himself with the greatest ease in the
world. In the humbler walks of Irish life the head of the house, if he is
of the proper sort, is called Himself, and it is in the shadow of this
stately title that my Ulysses will appear in this chronicle.
I am quite sure I do not believe in the inferiority of woman, but I have a
feeling that a man is a trifle superior in practical affairs. If I am in
doubt, and there is no husband, brother, or cousin near, from whom to
seek advice, I instinctively ask the butler or the coachman rather than a
female friend; also, when a female friend has consulted the Bradshaw
in