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: CHAPTER III. An Absentee's Agent. IRISH agents, like Irish potatoes, pigs, and patriots, are separable into two broad divisions—the good and bad, and among the former Mr. Brereton may fairly be classed. The house of Knockraymond is one in which even the lordly income of its owner might be worthily spent, and Mr. Brereton, whose numerous family does not occupy more than a small portion of it, regrets that its owner has never seen its beauties or its capabilities. To the casual observer Mr. Brereton would appear to be the practical owner of the Knockraymond estate ; but none know better than the tenants how little real assistance in time of trouble can be given by one who has himself no money to spare, and who openly declares that in his dealings between his employer and the tenant he must be just before he is generous. Mr. Brereton's ideas of an agent's duties are clearly denned : first, to secure the rent; secondly, to manage the property fairly, in the direction indicated by the owner; thirdly, to assistthe tenants to the best of his ability ; and fourthly, to take upon himself all the risks inseparable from the management of Irish properties. These duties he has faithfully performed for many years, yet he feels that the majority of the tenants fail to reciprocate his friendly feelings. On the Knock- raymond estate he has striven to increase the size of the farms; and, as from time to time a small holding fell vacant without any immediate successor, he has refused another tenant, and divided the plot among adjoining holders. For this he has been denounced from the altar of the chapel hard by the gate as an exterminator who had quenched the fire of a homestead and assisted towards the destruction of a virtuous tenantry ; and not even from the tenants between whom the holding...