ABSTRACT
Professor of philosophy at Columbia University until his death in 1954, Irwin Edman was not content with the pursuit of abstract theory alone; his first concern was for its application as a vital human impulse. The Ireland the author remembered was one of the gracious oases of travel in a world where travel and delectation had become impossible. Indeed, one comes to a country expecting to find certain things and if the country or one's own imagination is susceptible of creative fiction one finds it. A cultivated lady who has lived all her life in New York, in her imagination has lived all its life in Ireland. Her conversation was dotted with affectionate references to parts of Dublin which, until a few years ago, she had never seen. For weeks thereafter one of the pleasures of Ireland for one academic wanderer was the delicious unexpectedness of conversation, cropping up at the most routine occasions and from the most commonplace persons.
