Up came the astonished waiter, and surveying the wreck with a sorrowful countenance, exclaimed, “By the powers, your onner, its Meary's looking-glass you've been and ruinated intirely!—and how will she kape herself nate and daysint?” subsequently explaining to us, that this vessel, filled with clear spring water, had served, prior to its dissolution, as the mirror of the pretty housemaid. I had my doubts as to the tale of a tub; but Frank, at all events, thought it his duty to have an interview with the bereaved Meary, and returned therefrom with one of his ears considerably enriched in colouring.
I strongly recommend the tourist to make himself a C.B., by procuring a portable bath of waterproof material, such as is now made for travellers. He will then have no difficulty to contend with beyond a slight indisposition on the part of the waiters to supply him liberally with the element required. “Bedad,” said one of them to me, “if the rain's to be presarved, and carried up stairs, and trated in this fashion, I'm thinking it'ill get so mighty fond of our attintions, that it'll never lave us at all, at all!”
Again, the fine gentleman may be disconcerted to find that windows very generally decline to be opened, or, being open, prefer to keep so, except in case of his looking out of them, when they are down upon his neck, like a guillotine. His looking-glass, too, just as it is brought to a convenient focus, may perhaps, dash madly round, as though urged by an anxiety, which it could not repress, to assure him, in white chalk, that it really cost three and sixpence!
But what are these trivial inconveniences, which amuse, more than they annoy, to “a man as calls himself a man,” and when he has such active, cheerful, untiring servants, ever ready to do all in their power to please him? The cuisine is certainly a little queer, but he who, with a Connamara appetite, cannot enjoy Connamara fare, salmon, fresh from its lakes, eggs newly laid, excellent bread and butter, the maliest of potatoes (“laughing at you, and with their coats unbuttoned from the heat,” but perhaps a trifle underboiled for our taste, until we learn to like them “with a bone in them”), together with the best of whiskey, and our Burton beer; he who cannot sleep in a clean Connamara bed, after a day among its mountains and lakes, nor say with Bellarius,
“Come; our stomach
Will make what's homely savoury; weariness
Can snore upon the flint, when resty sloth
Finds the down pillow hard,—
why he's not the man for Galway, and had better keep away from it.
CHAPTER XI. FROM GALLWAY TO LIMERICK
WE witnessed at the railway station, on our arrival at Galway, a most painful and touching scene,—the departure of some emigrants, and their last separation, here on earth, from dear relations and friends. The train was about to start, and the platform was crowded with men, women, and children, pressing round to take a last fond look. Ever and anon, a mother or a sister would force a way into the carriages, flinging her arms around her beloved, only to be separated by a superior strength, and parting from them with such looks of misery as disturbed the soul with pity. And then, for the first time, we heard the wild Irish “cry,” beginning with a low, plaintive wail, and gradually rising in its tone of intense sorrow, until