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when

"Well, I'll tell you

In all the changes that have taken place in this changeable world, since I had the pleasure of making acquaintance with it, the greatest is in travelling. When I was a youngster, I remember my father, who was Mayor of Cork in the year of grace '97, setting out for Dublin with the address from the Corporation of that loyal city to the Viceroy of the day. I remember it, as it were but yesterday. It was thought at that time to be a great journey, and the leave-taking of friends and relatives was not without tears. They took two days to reach Limerick; on the third they proceeded to Tullamoore, where they slept; and on the fourth, taking ship in the canal boat, they arrived in the metropolis late at night. But now-a-days, what between railroads and steam coaches, men go.

The old gentleman gave a sweep of his hand from his breast till he stretched it at arm's length, and then let it drop by his side. How wonderful is the eloquence of action Words were invented but to help it out. I have seen an Italian gather up the points of his fingers till his hand looked like a pineapple, and shake it with a grimace that would have done honour to an ape. I have seen a Frenchman elevate his shoulders till he endangered his ears; but old Moonshine's motion was altogether on a great scale. It was magnificent; it was natural-such as I should suppose Adam to have made to Eve when he showed her the world was all before them. The very form of ex pression was grand; it was incomplete; it savoured somewhat of infinity. "Men go," said he, with a wave of his hand-had he said "to the ends of the earth" it would have been nothing.

After a moment's pause the narrator proceeded: "I shall never forget my first journey from Limerick to Dublin. A day-coach had been established, which was considered a marvel of celerity. It left Swinburne's hotel early in the morning, and contrived to accomplish half of the journey that day, arriving late in the evening at Mountrath, where the travellers slept, whence, starting next morning, after an early breakfast, it entered the metropolis by the light of the old oil-lamps, upon the second day. You may yet see the old roadside inn a little way outside the town of Mountrath-a large, high house, retired a short way from the road, having a spacious sweep of gravelled space before it, and a multitude of windows; but, alas! it is now falling fast into decay; and one never sees the bustling face of the white-aproned waiter standing at the door, or hears the crack of the postillion's whip as he leads out his posters to horse a gentleman's travelling-carriage.

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Well, all that is past and gone. On the second day of our journey, we had all assembled drowsily in the parlour, which smelled villanously of the preceding night's supper, and had sat down to our hurried breakfast. By the time we had half finished our meal, a car drove up to the door, and in a few moments after a gentleman entered in a large drab travelling coat, with half a dozen capes, and a huge red shawl wound around his neck. He deposited a travelling-case leisurely on the sideboard, and then looked keenly around him. The survey did not seem to give him much gratification. The eggs had all disappeared, and the cold beef was in a very dilapidated condition. However, he sat down, took off his

coat and shawl, and addressed himself to the cold meat like a hungry man. The waiter made his appearance.

"Just five minutes more, gentlemen, the horses are putting to.'

The traveller looked up quietly. He was not a man to be put out of his way. He ordered some eggs, and desired the waiter to make fresh tea.

"Are you going by the coach, sir?” inquired the attendant.

"Yes, certainly," was the reply, in an English accent (he was a traveller from a London house), "but I must have my breakfast first; so be quick, will you?"

The waiter left the room, and immediately after we heard the fellow telling the guard to be expeditious; an exhortation to which that worthy responded by a clamorous blast of his horn that made us all start from our seats, and hurry out of the room, leaving the English gentleman alone to finish his breakfast, which, to do him justice, he seemed by no means disposed to neglect. The waiter, meantime, brought in the tea, and retired; but was speedily summoned back by a vigorous ringing of the bell.

"A spoon, please," said the gentle

man.

The waiter advanced to the table to procure the article, but, to his astonishment, there was not a spoon to be seen; nay, even those which had been in the cups had all disappeared.

"Blessed Virgin !" ejaculated the dismayed attendant, "what's become of all the spoons?"

"That's just what I want to know, you blockhead," said the other.

"Two dozen and a half-real silver," cried Tom.

"I want only one," said the gentleman. "Haven't you a spoon in your establishment, my man?"

Tom made no reply, but rushed distractedly out of the room, and running up to the coachman, cried out, "stop Dempsey, for the love of heaven!"

"All right!" says Dempsey, with a twirl of his whip, gathering up the reins, and preparing to start-for we had all taken our places.

"Tisn't all right, I tell you," cried Tom, "where are the spoons?"

"What spoons? Arrah! don't be bothering us, man; and we five minutes behind time. Joey, hould that off-leader's head, till she goes on a bit."

By this time the master of the inn

had come out to learn what all the hubbub was about. Tom, half blubbering, poor fellow, made him acquainted with the fact, that all his silver spoons had vanished. The landlord cried out "robbery!" the housemaids screamed out "murder !" and a variety of other exclamations, too dreadful to contemplate. When silence was restored, the inn-keeper insisted on stopping the coach till he ascertained if the report of Tom was true. Ere many moments he returned, as pale as a ghost, and said—

"Gentlemen, I'm sorry to trouble you; but I must beg you'll come down, till a search is made for my property. Tom, here, will swear that there was a spoon in every tea-cup this morning as usual-won't you, Tom?"

"Be dad I'll take my Bible-oath of that same, sure enough," replied Tom ; "and sure I didn't swallow them."

The passengers all indignantly refused to submit to the search proposed by the landlord. An old lady inside went off in hysterics, when the innkeeper opened the door, and proposed to turn her pockets inside out. There was an officer, with a wooden leg, on the box-seat, who swore, in the most awful manner, that he would run the first man through the body that attempted to lay a hand on him-by the way, he hadn't a sword, but he forgot that in his fury. There was a justice of the peace for the county, who protested that he would commit the host for contempt; and a Dublin attorney in the back-seat intimated his determination to indict Tom, who had laid hold of his leg, for an assault; and, moreover, to commence an action against his master for defamation. As I was but a youngster then, and the weakest of the party, the landlord chucked me down in a twinkling, and hauled me into the parlour, half dead with fright; and thereupon the rest of the passengers, including the wooden-legged captain, scrambled down, and followed, determined to make common cause and protect me from insult with their lives, if necessary. And now we were all again in the breakfast-room, clamouring and remonstrating, while, to add to the din, the guard kept up a continual brattle with his horn. All this time the English gentleman was steadily prosecuting his work upon the eggs and toast, with a cup of tea before him,

which he was leisurely sipping, quite at his ease like.

"What the deuce is the matter?" said he, looking up, "can't you let a man take his breakfast in comfort."

"The plate!" said the master. "The silver spoons !" cried the butler.

"Robbery !" shouted the mistress. "Murder!" &c., screamed the housemaids.

"Search every one," demanded the host; "come, let us begin with this young chap," diving his hand into my breeches pocket.

"I think," said the English gentleman, coolly, "'twould be as well first to search the premises. Is the waiter long in your service ?"

"Fifteen years last Shrovetide, and I defy any man to lay as much as the big of his nail to my charge."

By this time the English gentleman had finished his breakfast, and, wiping his mouth deliberately, he commenced to search the room. He opened every drawer of the sideboard, then he looked under the table, then behind the window-shutters, but all in vain. After that he stopped a moment to reflect, when a bright thought seemed to cross his mind, and he raised the lid of one of the teapots, but with as little success as before; nevertheless, he continued his examination of the teapots, and when he came to the last, what do you think, but he thrust in his hand, and drew out first one spoon, and then another, till he laid a number of them on the table. Tom rushed up and began to count"Two, four, six," and so on, till at length he exclaimed

"May I never see glory, but they're all right, every one. The Lord between us and harm, but this bangs all that ever I seen!"

"I'll tell you what, my man," said the gentleman, looking sternly at the astonished waiter, "I strongly suspect you have been playing tricks upon your master. A nice haul you'd have had of it when the company had gone away! I don't like the look of the fellow, I tell you," he continued, addressing himself to the host; "and if it wasn't for the fortunate circumstances of my coming in a little late and wanting a spoon, you would have lost your property, sir. You may count it a lucky day that I came to your house."

The landlord was struck dumb with

amazement; even the mistress hadn't a word to say, though she looked wickedly at poor Tom, and the housemaids began to cry and bless themselves.

"Gentlemen," proceeded the Englishman, "I hope you will overlook the insult you have received; as, after all, the landlord is not to be blamed; and if he will insist on this blackguard waiter making an ample apology, I will take upon me to say for you all, that you will not take any proceedings."

All cheerfully expressed their assent to the proposition except the attorney, who still muttered something about assault and defamation, which so terrified Tom that he most humbly entreated pardon of the whole company, though he still protested that he was innocent of the crime laid to his charge.

"Gammon!" said the gentleman; "but as you have made proper submission, and nothing has been lost, I shall make it a further condition with your master, that he won't turn you adrift on the world with a thief's character, but give you an opportunity of reforming. Keep a sharp eye on him, however, sir, I advise you. And now, gentlemen, I think we'd better be moving."

We all hurried out and took our places, the English gentleman getting up on the seat behind the coachman. Dempsey "threw the silk" into the horses; the guard blew an impatient blast on his horn, and off we went at a slapping pace, the host bowing humbly to us until we were out of sight.

"I'm driving on this road these ten years," said Dempsey, when he slackened his pace up a hill; "and I never knew such a thing as that to happen before."

"Very likely," said the Englishman, quietly, "and never will again."

"I always thought Tom Reilly was as honest a fellow, man and boy, as any in the parish.'

"I make no doubt he is," replied the other; "he has a very honest countenance."

"I thought, sir," said the captain, "you said you didn't like his look?"

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Maybe I did say so," was the reply. "And pray, sir, do you still think 'twas he hid the spoons?"

"Not a bit of it."

"Then who the d-l did ?"

"I did. Do you think I'm green enough to travel so cold a morning as

this without having a comfortable breakfast?"

"Well," said Dempsey, "that's the knowingest trick I ever heard of in my life."

"Not bad," replied the gentleman, with great sang froid, "but it won't do to be repeated."

When we arrived at Portarlington, the gentleman who, by the way, turned out to be a very pleasant fellow, and up to all sorts of life-got off the coach, and ordered his travelling-case to be taken into the inn.

"Do you stop here, sir?" asked the coachman.

"Yes, for the present. I have a little business to do here as well as at Mountrath."

The gentleman, having given the usual gratuity to the guard and coachman, and also a slip of paper to Dempsey, which he directed him to give to the host at Mountrath, passed into the inn; the coach drove on, and I never saw him again.

Dempsey having pocketed the shilling, looked at the paper with some curiosity, in which, to say the truth, we all shared.

"There's no harm in reading it, as it is open," said the Captain, taking it from Dempsey.

They were a few lines, written in

You may be sure we all enjoyed this finish to the joke, and Dempsey forwarded the paper by the downcoach, that poor Tom Reilly's character might be cleared with the least possible delay. Tom was fully reinstated in the confidence of his employers; but the landlady had got such a fright, that she determined her silver spoons should never again be placed at the mercy of any traveller. Accordingly, she transferred them to the private part of the establishment, substituting for them in the public room a set of very neat pewter articles-there was no German silver, or albata, or such things in those days-which, when cleaned, looked nearly as well as silver. Many a time I stirred my tea at breakfast with one of them, and thought of "Elkanah Smithers, jun."

JONATHAN FREKE SLINGSBY.