Pro patria - 1883 Author:William Mackay Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. A POLITICAL POWEE. ' A Steangee to the metropolis, I presume," said my guest; " alas ! through life I have ever been acting the part of host t... more »oward men, and not a bit of gratitude I have received for it." Altogether the observation was nothing to my taste. My costume was devoid of the rents and the dirt so conspicuously prominent in the habiliments of the man who sat opposite to me, and yet I suppose there was about the cut of them or the set of them that fatal Something which told of the provincial snip. " I am not Dublin born," I answered, with an emphasis which implied that although Dublin had not been the place of my nativity, I had been conveyed thitherimmediately after that event, and had remained ever since a recognised ornament of the capital. He regarded me carefully through his eye-glass, and said— " Speak again, and hear if I can't tell your county." " That I imagine would be hardly possible," replied I—and to this day I believe no one could even tell I was Irish by my accent, much less name the county I was born in. " How many guesses will you give me ? ' he asked. "As many as you like," I replied, knowing that nothing but, chance would assist him in arriving at the truth. " Then I'll guess once. You're from the County Wicklow." I acknowledged that he had made a lucky hit, at which he shrugged his shoulders, and lifted the glass to his lips. While on this point I may observe thatit is quite impossible to tell a genuine Irish gentleman by his brogue. Two down-trodden nationalities have suffered very much in this respect at the hands of the novelists and playwrights—the Jews and the Irish. An eminent authority, himself one of the Chosen People, has triumphantly asserted that the genuine Hebrew is quite devoid of those defe...« less