In Ireland and in America he does hard manual labour, but somehow the genius of finance is not his. His hard work is on the land in one form or another. Now and again he may build up quite a considerable fortune in petty shop-keeping--the big traders are nearly all Anglo-Irish--but when he does, his sons become professional men and the business ceases to be. One can hardly imagine in Celtic Ireland what occurs every day in English business life, where the son of a successful business man may be a public-school man, a University man, and have had all the advantages of wealth, and yet succeed his father in the business. And his son succeeds him, and so on. This, in Celtic Ireland, would, I fear, be taken as indicative of a pettifogging spirit. The Anglo-Irishman, on the contrary, succeeds to the business his father has made, even though he be a University man; and the Grafton Street shops are often run by men who are graduates and honourmen of the University, and yet do not disdain to be seen in their shops.
There is nothing Irish about North-East Ulster except the country itself, which does not materially alter its character, because it is studded with factories. From the streets of Belfast you see the Cave Hill, as from easy-going Dublin you see the Dublin Mountains. Perhaps there is something of exuberance caught from the Celt in the paraphernalia and ceremonial of the Orange Society. Who can say how much of poetry it may not mean, that crowded hour of glorious life which comes about mid-July, when men who have worked side by side in amity all the rest of the year suddenly become bitter enemies, when the wearing of an Orange sash and the sight of an Orange lily stir a fever in the blood?
Apart from such occasions, they are given in Belfast to minding their own business, and minding it very well. The Belfast man is very shrewd, but he has a great simplicity withal. He has none of the uppish notions of the Celt, and though he makes money he does not make it to display it. He is blunt and brusque in his speech and manner, and so not unlike his Lancashire brother. He lives simply. In public matters he has the priceless advantage, in Ireland, of knowing what he wants; and he usually gets it, unless his demands be too outrageous. He is a hard man of business, but in his human relationships he is kind and sincere. I have known exiles of Dublin who went to Belfast in tears, and for the first months or years of their residence were always sighing after Dublin. When, however, they came to know the man of the North--he takes a good deal of knowing--nothing would induce them to return to Dublin.