With Boyse of Bannow I shall follow the fancy of the moment, which to my thinking is the only true mode of travel.
"Du Cros" has agreed to furnish a perfectly new Panhard for and upon the same terms which I received in France last year, viz., thirty pounds sterling per week, and everything found except the board and lodging of the chauffeur. These very necessary details arranged we are impatient to be off and leave London on a hot day in June. The smells, dirt, and dust of her wooden streets, driven in clouds over all the grand old city, follow us far out into the green meadows of England until we ask whether the hawthorn blossoms have ever held any fragrance, and have we not been mistaken as to roses. But London is not all of England, and we are finally well beyond her influence and wondering why we remained within her limits with the beautiful country so near at hand. The meadows of England giving way to the mountains of Wales, one catches a glimpse of the stately towers of Conway Castle, and then sails outward and westward upon a level sea, which, on its farther side, holds the haven of desire, Dublin, on the broad waters of the Liffey.
Ireland welcomes us, weeping softly the while, though smiling ever and anon as the sunlight rifts downward from the west. The gang-plank is slippery and the pavements mucky, but our welcome is a warm one, at least one fat, comfortable looking old woman with a shawl over her head, a gown whose colour I cannot attempt to give, and shoes which have evidently been discarded by her "auld man," greets me with a "Glory be to God, but yer honour is welcome to Ireland!" and then catching sight of my Jap servant, she gives utterance to a very audible aside, "Be the powers of the divil, phat's that he has wid him!" crossing herself vehemently the while, firmly convinced, I doubt not, that she has seen a limb of Satan, which I think he strongly resembles.
The Shelburn Hotel receives us within its walls, unchanged in the thirty years which have elapsed since I last crossed the threshold, a comfortable inn, pleasantly situated upon College Green, where a band of Irish musicians are discoursing American ballads of the early sixties.
One runs into the tide of American tourists here in Dublin, and to-night this hotel is crowded with them. The clatter of tongues proving too much for me, I dine and start to bed as soon as possible—a good book and an easy resting-place are attractive after the long ride from London.
In the hallway I encounter the porter trying to induce an old gentleman to go to bed. Said gentleman is drunk as a gentleman should be, and sound asleep in his chair, holding fast to a glass of whiskey and soda, from which no efforts of the porter can part him.
"What's the number of your room, sir?"
The sleeping eyes half open as the happy man murmurs, "Wasn't you tryin' to stale my whiskey just now?"
"Well, I thought, sir, ye would be more comfortable in yer room."
"Let slapin' dogs lie, me boy. But 'twas in a good cause ye did it, and so I'll go," and he staggers off to the lift, sleeps on my shoulders until I get out, and probably on the bench for the rest of the night, as that small lift boy could never move that bulk, redolent of whiskey and good humour.