CHAPTER VI.
THE KANTURK HOTEL, SOUTH MAIN STREET, CORK.
All the world no doubt knows South Main Street in the city of Cork.
In the "ould" ancient days, South and North Main Streets formed the chief thoroughfare through the city, and hence of course they derived their names.

But now, since Patrick Street, and Grand Parade, and the South Mall have grown up, Main Street has but little honour.

It is crowded with second-rate tobacconists and third-rate grocers; the houses are dirty, and the street is narrow; fashionable ladies never visit it for their shopping, nor would any respectable commercial gent stop at an inn within its purlieus.
But here in South Main Street, at the time of which I am writing, there was an inn, or public-house, called the Kanturk Hotel.

In dear old Ireland they have some foibles, and one of them is a passion for high nomenclature.

Those who are accustomed to the sort of establishments which are met with in England, and much more in Germany and Switzerland, under the name of hotels, might be surprised to see the place in South Main Street which had been dignified with the same appellation.