Penelope's Irish Experiences. Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin

else in this degenerate age, which has mostly forgotten how to converse in learning to chat; and any one who goes to the Spring Show at Ball's Bridge, or to the Punchestown or Leopardstown races, or to the Dublin horse show, will have to confess that the Irishwomen can dispute the palm with any nation.

      'Light on their feet now they passed me and sped,

       Give you me word, give you me word,

       Every girl wid a turn o' the head

       Just like a bird, just like a bird;

       And the lashes so thick round their beautiful eyes

       Shinin' to tell you it's fair time o' day wid them,

       Back in me heart wid a kind of surprise,

       I think how the Irish girls has the way wid them!'

      Their charm is made up of beautiful eyes and lashes, lustre of hair, poise of head, shapeliness of form, vivacity and coquetry; and there is a matchless grace in the way they wear the 'whatever,' be it the chiffons of the fashionable dame, or the shawl of the country colleen, who can draw the two corners of that faded article of apparel shyly over her lips and look out from under it with a pair of luminous grey eyes in a manner that is fairly 'disthractin'.'

      Yesterday was a red-letter day, for I dined in the evening at Dublin Castle, and Francesca was bidden to the concert in the Throne Room afterwards. It was a brilliant scene when the assembled guests awaited their host and hostess, the shaded lights bringing out the satins and velvets, pearls and diamonds, uniforms, orders, and medals. Suddenly the hum of voices ceased as one of the aides-de-camp who preceded the vice-regal party announced 'their Excellencies.' We made a sort of passage as these dignitaries advanced to shake hands with a few of those they knew best. The Lord Lieutenant then gave his arm to the lady of highest rank (alas, it was not I!); her Excellency chose her proper squire, and we passed through the beautifully decorated rooms to St. Patrick's Hall in a nicely graded procession, magnificence at the head, humility at the tail. A string band was discoursing sweet music the while, and I fitted to its measures certain well-known lines descriptive of the entrance of the beasts into the ark.

      'The animals went in two by two,

       The elephant and the kangaroo.'

      As my escort was a certain brilliant lord justice, and as the wittiest dean in Leinster was my other neighbour, I almost forgot to eat in my pleasure and excitement. I told the dean that we had chosen Scottish ancestors before going to our first great dinner in Edinburgh, feeling that we should be more in sympathy with the festivities and more acceptable to our hostess, but that I had forgotten to provide myself for this occasion, my first function in Dublin; whereupon the good dean promptly remembered that there was a Penelope O'Connor, daughter of the King of Connaught. I could not quite give up Tam o' the Cowgate (Thomas Hamilton) or Jenny Geddes of fauld-stule fame, also a Hamilton, but I added the King of Connaught to the list of my chosen forebears with much delight, in spite of the polite protests of the Rev. Father O'Hogan, who sat opposite, and who remarked that

      'Man for his glory

       To ancestry flies,

       But woman's bright story

       Is told in her eyes.

       While the monarch but traces

       Through mortal his line,

       Beauty born of the Graces

       Ranks next to divine.'

      I asked the Reverend Father if he were descended from Galloping O'Hogan, who helped Patrick Sarsfield to spike the guns of the Williamites at Limerick.

      “By me sowl, ma'am, it's not discinded at all I am; I am one o' the common sort, just,” he answered, broadening his brogue to make me smile. A delightful man he was, exactly such an one as might have sprung full grown from a Lever novel; one who could talk equally well with his flock about pigs or penances, purgatory or potatoes, and quote Tom Moore and Lover when occasion demanded.

      Story after story fell from his genial lips, and at last he said apologetically, “One more, and I have done,” when a pretty woman, sitting near him, interpolated slyly, “We might say to you, your reverence, what the old woman said to the eloquent priest who finished his sermon with 'One word, and I have done'”.

      “An' what is that, ma'am?” asked Father O'Hogan.

      “'Och! me darlin' pracher, may ye niver be done!'”

      We all agreed that we should like to reconstruct the scene for a moment and look at a drawing-room of two hundred years ago, when the Lady Lieutenant after the minuets at eleven o'clock went to her basset table, while her pages attended behind her chair, and when on ball nights the ladies scrambled for sweetmeats on the dancing-floor. As to their probable toilets, one could not give purer pleasure than by quoting Mrs. Delany's description of one of them:—

      'The Duchess's dress was of white satin embroidered, the bottom of the petticoat brown hills covered with all sorts of weeds, and every breadth had an old stump of a tree, that ran up almost to the top of the petticoat, broken and ragged, and worked with brown chenille, round which twined nasturtiums, ivy, honeysuckles, periwinkles, and all sorts of running flowers, which spread and covered the petticoat. … The robings and facings were little green banks covered with all sorts of weeds, and the sleeves and the rest of the gown loose twining branches of the same sort as those on the petticoat. Many of the leaves were finished with gold, and part of the stumps of the trees looked like the gilding of the sun. I never saw a piece of work so prettily fancied.'

      She adds a few other details for the instruction of her sister Anne:—

      'Heads are variously adorned; pompons with some accompaniment of feathers, ribbons, or flowers; lappets in all sorts of curli-murlis; long hoods are worn close under the chin; the ear-rings go round the neck(!), and tie with bows and ends behind. Night-gowns are worn without hoops.'

Part Second—Munster.

       Table of Contents

Chapter VII. A tour and a detour.

       Table of Contents

      '“An' there,” sez I to meself, “we're goin' wherever we go,

       But where we'll be whin we git there it's never a know

       I'll know.”'

       Jane Barlow.

      We had planned to go direct from Dublin to Valencia Island, where there is not, I am told, 'one dhry step 'twixt your fut an' the States'; but we thought it too tiring a journey for Benella, and arranged for a little visit to Cork first. We nearly missed the train owing to the late arrival of Salemina at the Kingsbridge station. She had been buying malted milk, Mellin's Food, an alcohol lamp, a tin cup, and getting all the doctor's prescriptions renewed.

      We intended, too, to go second or third class now an then, in order to study the humours of the natives, but of course we went 'first' on this occasion on account of Benella. I told her that we could not follow British usage and call her by her surname. Dusenberry was too long and too—well, too extraordinary for daily use abroad.

      “P'r'aps it is,” she assented meekly; “and still, Mis' Beresford, when a man's name is Dusenberry, you can't hardly blame him for wanting his child to be called by it, can you?”

      This was incontrovertible, and I asked her middle name. It was Frances, and that was too like Francesca.

      “You don't like the sound o' Benella?” she inquired. “I've always set great store by my name, it is so unlikely. My father's name was Benjamin and my mother's Ella, and mine is made from both of 'em; but you can call me any kind of a name you please, after what you've done for me,” and she closed her eyes