Suddenly the hum of voices ceased as one of the aides-de-camp who preceded the vice-regal party announced 'their Excellencies.' We made a sort of passage as these dignitaries advanced to shake hands with a few of those they knew best.

The Lord Lieutenant then gave his arm to the lady of highest rank (alas, it was not I!); her Excellency chose her proper squire, and we passed through the beautifully decorated rooms to St.
Patrick's Hall in a nicely graded procession, magnificence at the head, humility at the tail.

A string band was discoursing sweet music the while, and I fitted to its measures certain well-known lines descriptive of the entrance of the beasts into the ark.
'The animals went in two by two, The elephant and the kangaroo.' As my escort was a certain brilliant lord justice, and as the wittiest dean in Leinster was my other neighbour, I almost forgot to eat in my pleasure and excitement.

I told the dean that we had chosen Scottish ancestors before going to our first great dinner in Edinburgh, feeling that we should be more in sympathy with the festivities and more acceptable to our hostess, but that I had forgotten to provide myself for this occasion, my first function in Dublin; whereupon the good dean promptly remembered that there was a Penelope O'Connor, daughter of the King of Connaught.

I could not quite give up Tam o' the Cowgate (Thomas Hamilton) or Jenny Geddes of fauld-stule fame, also a Hamilton, but I added the King of Connaught to the list of my chosen forebears with much delight, in spite of the polite protests of the Rev.Father O'Hogan, who sat opposite, and who remarked that 'Man for his glory To ancestry flies, But woman's bright story Is told in her eyes.
While the monarch but traces Through mortal his line, Beauty born of the Graces Ranks next to divine.' I asked the Reverend Father if he were descended from Galloping O'Hogan, who helped Patrick Sarsfield to spike the guns of the Williamites at Limerick.
"By me sowl, ma'am, it's not discinded at all I am; I am one o' the common sort, just," he answered, broadening his brogue to make me smile.
A delightful man he was, exactly such an one as might have sprung full grown from a Lever novel; one who could talk equally well with his flock about pigs or penances, purgatory or potatoes, and quote Tom Moore and Lover when occasion demanded.
Story after story fell from his genial lips, and at last he said apologetically, "One more, and I have done," when a pretty woman, sitting near him, interpolated slyly, "We might say to you, your reverence, what the old woman said to the eloquent priest who finished his sermon with 'One word, and I have done'".
"An' what is that, ma'am ?" asked Father O'Hogan.
"'Och! me darlin' pracher, may ye niver be done!'" We all agreed that we should like to reconstruct the scene for a moment and look at a drawing-room of two hundred years ago, when the Lady Lieutenant after the minuets at eleven o'clock went to her basset table, while her pages attended behind her chair, and when on ball nights the ladies scrambled for sweetmeats on the dancing-floor.