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Updated: June 19, 2025
When sceptics ask for proofs, Ballyards replies, "We don't need proofs!" A drunken man said, on a particularly hearty Saturday night, that Ballyards was the finest town in the world, but the general opinion of his fellow-townsmen was that this claim, while very human, was excessively expressed. London, for example, was bigger than Ballyards.
It was true that Uncle Matthew had been dismissed from the Ballyards National School, in which he had been an assistant teacher, but when John considered the circumstances in which Uncle Matthew had been dismissed, he felt satisfied that his uncle, so far from having behaved foolishly, had behaved with great courage and chivalry.
"Well, I'll bring it to you then." She went into the kitchen and presently returned, carrying John's letter in her hand. "Is this it?" she said. "It's got the Ballyards postmark on it." He took it from her. "Yes, that's it," he replied, tearing it in pieces. "Could I trouble you to put it in the fire," he said, handing the torn paper to her.
Tunnels and attractive seaboards were extraneous things that might bring fortune, but could not bring merit, to those lucky enough to possess them; but Ballyards had character ... its men were meritable men ... and Ballyards would not exchange the least of its inhabitants for ten tunnels.
He remembered how she had insisted upon the fact that the MacDermotts had lived over the shop in Ballyards for several generations; and now, with her repetition of the statement that London was an unneighbourly town, he realised that Ballyards in her mind was a place of kinsmen, that the people of Ballyards were members of one family.
He was in a place of cool cloisters and wide green lawns. He could see young men in white flannels playing tennis ... in Ballyards it was called "bat and ball" ... and beyond the tennis-courts, he saw the shining river. "What place is this?" he said to a man who went by. "Temple Gardens!" the man replied. He walked about the Gardens, delighting in the quiet and the coolness.
His mother's conversation, too, had been displeasing to him. She talked of Ballyards and of the shop all the time. She talked of the prosperity of the business and of the respect in which the MacDermotts were held in their town. Mr. Hinde had told her of the harsh conditions in which journalists and writers had to work, particularly the journalists.
'It's miles! By all I can make out, John, you live as far from the station as Millreagh is from Ballyards. I had to come here in one of them things that runs without horses ... what do you call them?" "Taxi-cabs!" "That's the name. It's a demented mad place this. Such traffic! Worse nor Belfast on the fair-day!" "It's like that every day, Mrs. MacDermott!" Hinde interjected.
"There's really nothing that a postcard couldn't do," Uncle William said. "That was the excuse. I've been thinking about you, John, and I thought it was a terrible pity you should never get out and about by yourself a bit ... out of Ballyards, I mean ... to look round you. It's no good to a lad to be always running about with his ma!" "You're a terrible schemer, Uncle William," said John.
Paul's Cathedral in the afternoon and had shown her the place where Queen Victoria returned thanks to Almighty God for her Diamond Jubilee ... and there, standing on the very steps of a Christian church, was a Chinaman! There were no Chinamen in Ballyards, thank God, nor were there any black men either.
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