Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: A Journey in Ireland 1921 CHAPTER I Life In Dublin A Middle-aged spinster lady eating a fish-course, laid down her fork sharply. " That's a bomb ! " Everybody else in the dining-room stopped eating for a moment. " Yes, that's a bomb I " they agreed —and went on with their talk and their food. A hollow " bang " like the bursting of a motor-car tyre had broken the subdued murmur of the evening streets. And in any other city of the civilised world that sound would have been put down to a motorcar tyre bursting. But this city was Dublin and the hour the normal one for such occurrences. Wherefore, the peaceful inhabitants of the hotel went on with their dinner. No one took much interest in the matter—no one except the traveller who had arrived at Westland Row just half an hour earlier. To him it conveyed two facts—that the incident really was a normal one in the city's life and that the bomb, by reason of the hollowness of its explosion, was not heavily charged but was probably a casing detonated. And, hastily finishing his dinner, the new arrival went out. He followed the direction from which,two or three streets away, the sound had come. He was still expectant of commotion. At the corner of the street two soldiers stood laughing with a girl. Home-goers, a few, were passing along Dawson Street. A tram clanked past. Groups of soldiers, young men and young women, were standing about the north side of Stephen's Green, exchanging leisured pleasantries. A stranger in a very strange city does not like to ask questions, and only once was any casual allusion heard to a bomb bursting at the heart of it. " At the corner of Grafton Street and Duke Street, I think. ... A man and a girl." Grafton Street was full of people—men, girls, soldiers. Barrel-organs were grind...