Page:Barbour--For the freedom from the seas.djvu/258

 was in Queenstown. Liberty was freely granted when the cruiser was in port and Nelson and Tip made several excursions to nearby points of interest, once getting as far afield as Dublin and once to Limerick. Cork was a favorite jaunt until the men of the fleets were forbidden to visit that city because of Sinn Fein demonstrations. Ireland was as much terra incognita to Tip as it was to Nelson, and they had a good deal of fun in exploring it

The Limerick trip was made at Tip's suggestion. He declared that all his life he had wanted to go and see where the poetry was made. Once there, and perched on an outside car, he had inquired affably of the where they made the limericks. "I'd like to see the factory, you know. We might take home a couple." This was beyond the driver, however. He, it appeared, had never heard of a limerick verse, and didn't seem to think very much of those that Tip recited for his benefit. On the return journey Nelson suggested that Limerick was not likely to win fame, as Cork had done, through the medium of one of the verses named for it, since there was nothing to rhyme with Limerick. Whereupon Tip had gazed fixedly out the carriage window for a space and had then recited triumphantly: 233