SOCIETY'IN IRELAND.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume V, Issue 261, 3 May 1878, Page 17

SOCIETY' IN IRELAND.

H\Q one can pro into snoipty ns represented in. the country houses in Ireland wirhnnt being struck by the absence of veneer which he will find thor?. We do not moan those country houses inhabited by people who spend their season regularly in London, and who differ in no way from the.niagnates with their houses in Yorkshire or Sussex, but the fawa.fi tip, Irish country houses— whose owners look upon" Dublin as their metropolis and great shopping town, and consider an occasional month in London as an event to ba classed with the ramble in Switzerland or the tonr of Italy. Tde visitor to one of these houses will find no sham — there is "no deception." His arrival will cause no flurry : be will not bo kept waititfg in the drawing-room while the lady of the house and the girls put "finishing touches to "their beauty. It is ten to one that, before he has succeeded in evoking a sound from the bell — probably broken — one of the young ladies will herself open the door, and with a welcome beaming from her honest Irish grey eyes at once insist on his feeling himself at home. There will be no false pride, no attempt to hide defects, or to make up by brag for poverty. Rather will fun be extracted from the very deficiencies, and the stranger -will at once see that there is no danger of putting his host or hostess to confusion by demanding what is not to be had. If there is but one man-servant, the host will not complain of the illness or temporary absence of a mythical footman ; if the one man-servant is tipsy (a not uncommon occurrence in the land of John Jamieson) the hostess "will not be the least ashamed of being detected assisting the maid to lay the cloth and arrange the dinner table. — Exchange. > ~ ~