I found it, on the contrary, marked not only by the strongest lines of sincerity and kindness, but by many of those delicate touches of consideration for the feelings of others which form the most indubitable symptoms of genuine good-breeding.
Instead of discovering that the stories were true about the sort of compulsion used in matters of drinking, I can safely say that, during the course of experience in joviality I went through in the north of Ireland, I seldom met with anything at a gentleman's table approaching even to exigence on this score.

I do not deny that our friends the Irish have a wonderfully winning way of insinuating their good cheer upon us, and sometimes of inducing us to swallow more claret than is perhaps good for us.
I landed once at Burncrana, a pretty quiet little village, with a watering-place look, on the eastern banks of that great and beautiful bay Lough Swilly.

One side of this fine harbour is formed by the bold promontory of Inishowen, celebrated in every land for its noble whiskey, second only (which, as a Scotchman, I am bound to assert) to Ferntosh or Glenlivet.

I was accompanied by an English gentleman, on the first day of his landing in Ireland.

As he then seriously imagined the inhabitants to belong to a sort of wild and uncouth race, I could see he was rather surprised at the gentleman-like deportment of an acquaintance of mine resident on the spot, for whom he had brought a letter.