This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1887 edition. Excerpt: ...village shopkeepers as readily as they do the landlords--Father Tom's parents are grocers. Alarmed at the steady increase of outrages in his parish, and indignant at the opposition that was offered to the shopkeepers when they attempted to enforce their claims by law, Father Tom for some time back had been considering the Land Question from a different side. He who has not attended Mass in an Irish Chapel cannot judge of Irish life;--its three or four aspects are strangely reflected and sharply epitomised in that fugitive hour. You have the Irish landscape well in your mind's eye--the grey sky and blue mountains in a ring, the hovels, the grey stony uplands, and the miles of brown bog where the curlews are flying. Say then, if it is not parcel of this gaunt white chapel, through whose broken windows the swallows fly circling? In the middle of the earthen floor there is a rude font for holy water, and in their haste and devotion the peasants splash the water so that it seems like an dbreuvoir where cattle have been lately drinking. There are a few pews; those next to the Communion rails are reserved for the landlords. The fluff on the bended neck of the girl is gold in the beam of white light that fells across the chapel, she prays gracefully, with refinement, addressing God in sweet and conventional phrases, and the delicate odour of verveine rises out of silk and fur and evaporates; the peasant women wrapped in their long black cloaks are bent double over the pews; their thin, long, yellow hands extended beyond their faces clutch a rosary feverishly; some of the men are down 011 their hands and knees grovelling, some kneel with straight CO7 j backs, chins lifted, breasts advanced--poses that recall those of martyred saints; they groan...