Through Connemara in a governess cart

BY THE AUTHORS OF “AN IRISH COUSIN.” Illustrated by W. W. Russell, from Sketches by th Œ. Somerville. LONDON: W. H. ALLEN & CO., LIMITED, 13, WATERLOO PLACE, S.W. — 1893.


The following pages, with their accompanying illustrations, originally appeared in the columns of “The Ladies’ Pictorial,” and are here reprinted by permission of the Proprietors.



MY second cousin and I came to London for ten days in the middle of last June, and we stayed there for three weeks, waiting for a fine day.
We were Irish, and all the English with whom we had hitherto come in contact had impressed upon us that we should never know what fine weather was till we came to England. Perhaps we came at a bad moment, when the weather, like the shops, was having its cheap sales. Certainly such half-hours of sunshine as we came in for were of the nature of “soiled remnants,” and at the end of the three weeks aforesaid we began to feel a good deal discouraged. Things came to a climax one day when we had sat for three-quarters of an hour in a Hungarian bread shop in Regent Street, waiting for the rain to clear off enough to let us get down to the New Gallery. As the fifth party of moist ladies came in and propped their dripping umbrellas against the wall behind us, and remarked that they had never seen such rain, our resolution first began to take shape.
“Hansom!” said my second cousin.
“Home!” said I.