The Wild Irish Girl: A National Tale
       Although much amused by this novel style of devotion at the shrine of Terpsichore, yet as the night was now calm, and an unclouded moon dispersed the gloom of twilight obscurity, I arose to pursue my journey. Murtoch would accompany me, though our hospitable friends did their utmost to prevail on both to remain for the night.     

       When I insisted on my host receiving a trifle, I observed poverty struggling with pride, and gratitude superior to both: he at last reluctantly consented to be prevailed on, by my assurance of forgetting to call on them again when I passed that way, if I were now denied. I was followed for several paces by the whole family, who parted with, as they received me, with blessings,—for their courtesy upon all occasions, seems interwoven with their religion, and not to be pious in their forms of etiquette, is not to be polite.     

       Benevolent and generous beings! whose hard labour     

  

       “Just gives what life requires, but gives no more,”      

  

       yet who, with the ever ready smile of heart-felt welcome, are willing to share that hard earned little, with the weary traveller whom chance conducts to your threshold, or the solitary wanderer whom necessity throws upon your bounty. How did my heart smite me, while I received the cordial rites of hospitality from your hands, for the prejudices I had hitherto nurtured against your characters. But your smiling welcome, and parting benediction, retributed my error—in the feeling of remorse they awakened.     

       It was late when I reached Bally————, a large, ugly, irregular town, near the sea coast; but fortunately meeting with a chaise, I threw myself into it, gave Murtoch my address, (who was all amazement at discovering I was son to the Lord of the Manor,) and arrived without further adventure at this antique chateau, more gratified by the result of my little pedestrian tour, than if (at least in the present state of my feelings,) I had performed it Sesostris-like, in a triumphal chariot, drawn by kings; for “so weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable,” appear to me the tasteless pleasures of the world I have left, that every sense, every feeling, is in a state of revolt against its sickening joys, and their concomitant 
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