Peeps at Many Lands by Katharine Tynan

Between Dublin and Newry there is not much to see or to remember except that Cromwell sacked Drogheda with a thoroughness, and that at Dundalk Edward Bruce, the brother of Robert, was crowned King of Ireland. The Mourne Mountains and Carlingford Lough bring us back to characteristic Ireland. Beyond them one enters the manufacturing districts -- that north-east corner of Ireland which no Celt looks upon as Ireland at all. In speech, in character, in looks, the people become Scotch and not Irish. One has crossed the border and Celtic Ireland is left behind.

In the north-east corner of Ulster they are all busy money-making and money-getting. The North of Ireland has admirable qualities -- thrift, energy, industry, ambition, capacity. In other parts of Ireland you find these qualities here and there; they are mainly, but not altogether, the qualities of the Anglo-Irish -- that is, in so far as they are a business asset. The Celt has no real capacity for money-making, though at the wrong end of the virtue of thrift -- that dreariest of the virtues -- he may accumulate it. He will put an enormous deal of energy into something that does not pay him in hard cash. Honorary positions are greedily sought after by the Irish everywhere. They will run any number of societies for nothing, will do the business of Leagues, of the Poor Law, of the County Councils. The energy shown by the Celt in doing the public business would enrich him if applied to his own. He has a large capacity for public business, and an extraordinary readiness to do it, which is, I suppose, the reason why he does the public business of America, while non-Irish Americans sit by and grumble at his way of doing it.