A FEW HYPERBOLES.
One of the clerks in the police-court of Liverpool got leave of absence in, as I best remember, 1845. He came to Dublin with some other young Englishmen for a few days of recreation. Curiosity induced him to visit our police-courts, where our clerks received him with fraternal courtesy. He told Mr. Cox that he and three others took an outside car, for a suburban drive. It happened to be on Corpus Christi day, and they were going along Rathmines road, just as the religious procession incident to the festival was moving round the extensive court outside of the Roman Catholic chapel there. They directed the driver to stop, and then stood up on the seats to obtain a full view. Almost immediately one of them exclaimed, "Well, that beats the devil!" The carman touched his hat to the exclaimer and replied, "Yes, your honor, that's what it's for." I have heard the late Judge Halliburton (Sam Slick the clock-maker) say, that he asked a carman what was the reason for building the Martello towers? and that the interrogated party told him, "he supposed it was, like the round towers, to puzzle posterity."
The Spaniard, who described the rain as so heavy, that "it wetted him to the marrow," was not so poetical or forcible in his hyperbole as some of our jarveys have been. I recollect reading in a little work, published many years ago, and entitled "Sketches of Ireland," that when a gentleman complained of the choking dust of the Rock road, and declared that he did not think it possible for a road to be so dusty, his driver remarked, "It's thrue for yer honor! but this road bates all others for dust, for, by all accounts, there was dust on this road the day after Noah's flood." A lady who resided at Chapelizod was wont to give a carman whom she frequently employed a glass of grog, along with his fare, at the conclusion of each engagement. However, she became too sparing of the spirits, or too generous of the water, but the grog eventually became so weak, that its recipient criticised it, of course with an oath, by asserting, that "if you threw half-a-pint of whisky over Essex Bridge, you might take up as strong grog as that at the Lighthouse."