“All right, if you don’t know, never mind; but don’t you direct me back down that hill, for I won’t go. If I do I can’t climb it again.”
“All right, sir,” he replied cheerfully. “I was only getting my bearings. Ye’ll go this way.” And he pointed up a side street, giving me a mass of intricate instructions, during which I noticed that he was comfortably drunk. However, I had got halfway down the steps towards him by this time, and I felt disinclined to ascend, so I thanked him and followed the first part of his directions up the side street. It led me to an open space—a kind of market-place, I think, where I found two of those splendid fellows, the R.I.C., who speedily directed me right. But even then I made a mistake, for of two large buildings opposite each other I chose the one that was lit up, and into which many people were going. As I mounted the steps I was assailed by a host of ragged children, crying, “Taksinwiye, Taksinwiye,” so loudly as almost to deafen me. I passed steadily on, saying, “I don’t understand,” although it was gradually borne in upon my consciousness that they meant, “Take us in with you.”
And then I found that it was not the hall at all, and that a concert was about to commence! So I went, dubiously enough, to the dark, unlighted building opposite, and entered the open door, to find it deserted. And the clock struck eight! Utterly bewildered I stood in the flagged corridor and consulted my form of instructions, but here, at any rate, I could find no fault. Yet something was woefully wrong. As I stood wondering a young man came in, who, though a member, knew nothing about the lecture, and with that innate courtesy which is so pleasant a trait of Irish character, immediately devoted himself to my service. He bounded upstairs to the hall, to find it in darkness, and then offered to take me to the secretary’s house, that being the only thing he could think of doing.
By this time I was resigned to the thought that I had come from London to the extreme north-west coast of Ireland to lecture, and by some fiendish complication had missed it, so I walked down the street by his side and said nothing. Suddenly a small boy, in a very smart scout uniform, rushed up to me out of the darkness, saluted and asked:
“Please, sir, are you Mr. Bullen?”
“I am, my lad,” I replied wearily, almost too much spent to wonder at this strange thing. Again he saluted and said:
“Please, sir, the lecture’s in the Town Hall, and I’ve been sent to find you and show you the way there.”
“All right,” I answered. “Kindly hurry back and tell the Deputy-Lieutenant (my chairman) that I have been lost, but am now on my way, and will arrive shortly.”
And it was so. The lecture was the first to be held in the magnificent new building which the good citizens of Derry have erected, but when I arrived at its noble portals and found that it was practically next door to the hotel whence I had issued three-quarters of an hour before I felt confused in my mind. Fortunately, a most enthusiastic scout-master had offered the services of his troop to act as stewards, and when the lecturer did not turn up at the appointed time they were delighted to go in search of him, with the result as described. And we started the lecture only twenty-five minutes late after all. The secretary had done his part; he had written to the agency to warn them of the change of hall, but their letter had missed me, he had also mentioned it at the hotel, but it was an Irish hotel, and that is enough said upon the subject.
Apropos of Irish hotels, I am pleasantly reminded of an experience at Cork. My dear old friend, Mr. Lane, wanted to put me up at Vernon Mount, but I had to leave Cork for Belfast by a train at something like 6 a.m., and so he took a room for me at the Station Hotel. Then he interviewed the boots or sub-deputy-boots, I should think, a wild kerne who looked as if he had never got over the shock of being born. To him Mr. Lane said, with tremendous mock severity: