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[ Verbatim.]
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[ Since Lord Glenthorn’s Memoirs were published, the editor has received letters and information from the east, west, north, and south of Ireland, on the present state of posting in that country. The following is one of the many, which is vouched by indisputable authority as a true and recent anecdote, given in the very words in which it was related to the editor ... Mr. ———, travelling in Ireland, having got into a hackney chaise, was surprised to hear the driver knocking at each side of the carriage. “What are you doing?”—“A’n’t I nailing your honour up?”—“Why do you nail me up? I don’t wish to be nailed up.”—“Augh! would your honour have the doors fly off the hinges?” When they came to the end of the stage, Mr. ——— begged the man to unfasten the doors. “Ogh! what would I he taking out the nails for, to be racking the doors?”—“How shall I get out then?”—“Can’t your honour get out of the window like any other jantleman?” Mr. ——— began the operation; but, having forced his head and shoulder out, could get no farther, and called again to the postilion. “Augh! did any one ever see any one get out of a chay head foremost? Can’t your honour put out your feet first, like a Christian?”
Another correspondent from the south relates, that when he refused to go on till one of the four horses, who wanted a shoe, was shod, his two postilions in his hearing commenced thus: “Paddy, where will I get a shoe, and no smith nigh hand?”—“Why don’t you see yon jantleman’s horse in the field? can’t you go and unshoe him?”—“True for ye,” said Jem; “but that horse’s shoe will never fit him.”—“Augh! you can but try it,” said Paddy.—So the gentleman’s horse was actually unshod, and his shoe put upon the hackney horse; and, fit or not fit, Paddy went off with it.
Another gentleman, travelling in the north of Ireland in a hackney chaise during a storm of wind and rain, found that two of the windows were broken, and two could not by force or art of man be pulled up: he ventured to complain to his Paddy of the inconvenience he suffered from the storm pelting in his face. His consolation was, “Augh! God bless your honour, and can’t you get out and set behind the carriage, and you’ll not get a drop at all, I’ll engage.”]
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[ Mirabeau—Secret Memoirs.]
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[ See Philosophical Transactions, vol. lxvii. part ii., Sir George Shuckburgh’s observations to ascertain the height of mountains—for a full account of the cabin of a couple of Alpine shepherdesses.]