Morning journal and courier., 1889-01-05

Sons of Erin.
 GALWAY, Ireland, Dec. 24. To the Editor of the JOURNAL AND COURIER:
 As rule an Irish inn is nothing better than base mockery of that most uncom- promising torturer of man, an English inn. The charming English inn is found only in English fiction, and stumbled upon in unex- pected and undiscoverable English places. The charming Irish inn is so rare thing that even Irish fiction, with all it's winsome e1aggeration, is guileless of it's presence. In fact hotel in Ireland is simply place where one voluntarily for necessary period resigns himself to captivity, surveillance and extor- tion. The actual and tremendous indigna- tion and surprise evinced at protest against either are clements of humor in the situa- ton, if those may exist where there seems only despair. Dante, with some psrticulari- ty, states that over the gate of Inferno he saw among other portentous announcements this sentence: "All hope abandon ye who enter here" Often one has known an hun dred so Irish inns, the fancy irresistibly comes that the route of VirgiPs ghost lay wholly through Ireland, and that Dante has suppressed some of the most important facts of the tour For irrevocable delay at an Irish inn would prepare any mind for as direful crime upon universal civilization as that perpetrated in the writing of Inferno by the maundering man -hater of Florence.
 The eHusivsness of your welcome at an Irish inn is alarming. The next instant you are alarmed because, with Queens warrant, Rrl of &ho$ From dozen to score of grinning, jump ing, wriggling, vooiferous beings grab and grasp and gurgle at you until you are inside the door and outside the law, and your be- longings have been wrenched from you, and yourself left as lone as is silence between the stars. Then if you find them, or anybody, in that blessed inn, you are an explorer, 8 discoverer, great, brave and patient soul. If your arrival may have been by falling off jaunting car into the door, if you have ridden in a hearse-like wagonette to the place subject to the prem sture and promis- cuous levies of the lightning tongued hordes that accompany it, or if you have walked and been haunted and taunted by porters and urchins from station to inn, for your
 
 toms of the country, there they all are, a notification of the separate and distinct in- struments for vexation you must know. There is the landlord, riotous in obsequious- ness; the landlsdy, beaming with smiles, but measuring your capacity for imposition with unerring accuracy; the head waiter, a superior foreign being, usually German ir, E,11 hn forms all offices with scorn, but now stand ing there with bland permissibility in his | face for your coming trial the porter and the second porter, who grin at you this once 1 to ever after grind; s'boots," that sodden, grimy slave who never sleeps and who is ever at war with all other souls within the place; 'tbuttons," in uniform as to clothing, l but in permanent gloom as to face, save l when you arrive and he Eghtens up with joy | at the misery he alone can cause you; half l dozen odorous stablemen, who each watch l their chance to lesr and pnll their forelooks 1 at you in effort to establish secret recognl l tion of what you may expect if you do moi I placate them; the bar maid, who knows you l know that it is she alone who supplies the awful voluminousness and minuteness oi I that inevitable bill, and who giggles and gy' | rates as she sees your own writhing recogni. | ton of what is to come; and number ot muscular cattle called chambermaids, who 1 in trice have settled the manner in which 1 you shall be racked and wrecked within the | precincts of the dark, clammy den to which l you are certain to be consigned.
 | But in & moment the cold realism of youl situation has come. You are inside a low dark, narrow hall and alone. At one side ii the bar. an affair constructed like an Ameri. can railway station news stand, which If shut out from sight whenever the bar maid ! $ha f( abuse her Boniface, or your own obJurga tions become too numerous and decisive Opposite is the ssCoffee Room" long, low cheerless place, with long, low, cheerlest table, spread with cloth ever decorated with misplaced matter. If you have the good fortune to finally get anything to eat ir the place you will have to partake of it witt blowsy tourist possessing one sofa, { drunken guest snoring upon another, { crowd of drovers, of politicians or of tht
 constabulary or military, swinging ale ol stout beside you, and the whole room al
 blue as channel fog with the smoke of to
 bacco. But there you are in the prison ik'
 hall. The head waiter is gone; the porte
 has grabbed your luggage and disappeared
 "boots" and "buttons" have vsnished; land lord, landlady and bar maid have beer swallowed up in the inconceivable some
 where behind the bar; stablemen and cham
 bermaids are whisked into undiscoverabl
 retreats. Great, gloomy doors, black, noul
 dy walls, hard, forbidding ceilings, alon
 confront you. You bang your knuokle
 against the bar window. Landlord, land
 lady or bar maid, by and by appears, givinl
 you look of pained surprise, and then dis
 appears. You call, "Porterl''-"Bootsl"-
 "Buttons!n-"Chambe There is no
 even g reproving glance now in answer
 Then you go and look into the street awhile
 Passers seem to wonder how you happene
 to escape. Returning you call and ban
 some more. This time echo alone reprove
 you. Cropping about the place, you snatc