The stories you are about to read are from traveling and a culmination from eight years of my wife and I living among the people in lands of rich stories, not excluding Ireland. It has given me great joy to write of our adventures in a format that takes the best of times, stirred with some pathos of fallen friends and then mixed into the tales within! These reminiscences will be treasured by my wife Pat and I - forever! No one character is represented in his or her entirety and no narrative can be said to be an actual event. These storied chapters herein, capture our lives as it might have happened. I have pasted the wonderful characters together from all the many vignettes we encompassed while dwelling amongst one of the most reflective societies today. Not reflective in some lofty sense, but as in a mirror of life that needs the rich loamy land and vibrant countryside to place one’s heart into. Ireland, with not much doubt, is the last and most beautiful, virginal country left today. Thanks to flying, there are many corners and stories on this earth that I have seen and wrote about of great exotic beauty and depth, but the endowments of pastoral Ireland leave one breathless. It’s soft and natural charm is the result of native Irishmen resisting the huge industrial revolution that has changed lives within the short span of our diminutive existences. The Emerald Isle is a refuge from the unbridled growth of material things. Time will undoubtedly take this last resort, but there are those of us who have advantaged ourselves with an affair of the heart - a sojourn with Ireland! The Author