AN AMERICAN WEEK-ENDER.

Northland Age, Volume VII, Issue 42, 17 June 1911, Page 8

AN AMERICAN WEEK-ENDER.

HIS IRISH EXPERIENCES. A masculine week-ender described his own feelings when, having accepted an invitation to visit Ireland, he found himself at a most imposing mansion and detailed to his special service the most dramatic and impressive valet that he had ever seen except in some farcical play. A PERFECT PALACE. "I accepted this particular invitation in a cavalier way, and expected to find myself in a pretty town house or suburban villa, with a modest sort of service. Instead of this I found myself at a fashionable Dublin house party, in a perfect palace, with a retinue of servants. “Well, it was up to little America to make good, and I'd have done it all right if it hadn’t been for the valet. He floored me in the beginning. I, however, managed to submit to his preparing me for the dinner table without any more than the usual embarrassment which a man suffers who is accustomed to do his own valeting. When I woke the next morning and remembered that I did not have any bath robe in my kit, the blamed thing having been packed in my steamer trunk, I didn't know what to do. Confess my shame to him ! Borrow ! You only suggest those alternatives because you never saw him. I finally refused my morning ‘bawth.’ which he told me was all ready, Having located the bathroom, down a long corridor past several guests’ rooms, and bracing up to the lie, I told him that I always took my ‘bawth’ at noon. I thought in that way I could elude his vigilance and keep my fell secret.

"I could feel his inward breath of contempt, and at noon-time so obsessed was I with the belief that if I didn’t take that ’bawth’ my country would be forever degraded in his eyes, finding myself free of social obligations for a while I sped into my room and clothed in my underwear and a feeling of righteousness, peeked through the massive door, saw the way clear, dived down the corridor, splashed about in l the tub, which was about the size of an ordinary house, and serene in the consciousness that I had vindicated myself, opened the door to return along the familiar route, again seeing that the way was clear.

“Unfortunately I made a wrong turning, and in a moment was in the midst of a small group of women playing bridge in a sort of morning-room, into which I stepped with 1 , a towel over my arm, clad In my Adamlike costume and a cake of soap. It would have been all right, I understood afterwards, If I had not stopped to apologise, but how can a man know those things, I’d like to ask ?

"That wasn’t my only pleasant remembrance of that visit. I discovered that I had worn a hole in one of my socks, and hid it in a high vase on top of an enormous mahogany dresser, donning my evening socks, and w!vn Valet came to dress me was obliged again to hear his snort of contempt when he discovered my looseness of ethics in this regard. “To add to my troubles I had only provided myself with one dress shirt and when I started my toilet for the second evening, found that he had rumpled the shirt up ready for the laundry, and it was in too bad a condition to wear. I dived into bed when I discovered this, and told him in a hoarse voice that I was too ill to come downstairs, but was merely suffer from one of my recurrent attacks of rheumatism. “I thought rheumatism the sort of thing you could get over quickly, but it seems he knew all about that, and wouldn’t allow me to eat or drink anything, and my last night of that infernal week-end visit was spent in bed alone, suffering from hunger, thirst, and wounded pride.”—NewYork Letter. ,