Just Irish Part 6

[Ill.u.s.tration: A DUBLIN ICE CART]

And here's another.

Two Irishmen were in Berlin at a music hall, and just in front of them sat two officers with their shakos on their heads.

Leaning forward, with a reputation for courtesy to sustain, one of the Irishmen said, pleasantly, "Please remove your helmet; I can't see the stage for the plume."

By way of reply the German officer insolently flipped the Irishman in the face with his glove.

In a second the Irishman was on his feet and in another second the officer's face was bleeding from a crashing blow.

Satisfaction having been thus obtained, the two Irishmen left the cafe and returned to their hotel, where they boasted of the affair.

Fortunately kind friends at once showed them the necessity of immediately crossing the frontier.

That the Irishman had not been run through by the officer's sword was due to the fact that he was a foreigner.

Speaking of fights, the other day an American friend of mine was taking a walk in Dublin and he came on a street fight. Four men were engaged in it, and no one else was interfering. Pa.s.sers by glanced over their shoulders and walked on. Two women, evidently related to the contestants, stood by awaiting the result.

My friend mounted a flight of steps and watched the affair with unaffected interest.

A member of the Dublin constabulary happened to pa.s.s the street, and, glancing down, saw to his disgust that it was up to him to stop a fight.

Slowly he paced toward them, giving them time to finish at least one round.

But the two women saw him coming and, rushing into the mixture of fists and arms and legs, hustled the combatants into the house, and the policeman went along his beat twirling, not his club, but his waxed mustache.

I told a Dublin man of this incident, deploring my luck in not having come across it with my camera in my hand.

He said: "That policeman was undoubtedly sorry that he happened on the row. He would much have preferred to let them fight it out while he sauntered by on another street all unknowing. Not that he was afraid to run them in, but that an Irishman loves a fight."

Another sight that I saw myself at a time when my camera was not with me was two little boys, not five years apiece, engaged in a wrestling match under the auspices of their father, who proudly told me that they were very good at it. The little fellows shook hands, flew at each other, and wrestled for all they were worth. And from the time they clinched until one or the other was thrown they were laughing with joy. They wrestled for several rounds, but the laughter never left them.

How much better it is for little children to learn to fight under the watchful and appreciative eye of a kind father than to learn at the hands of vindictive strangers.

[Ill.u.s.tration: O'CONNELL'S MONUMENT, DUBLIN]

CHAPTER VII

_Snapping and Tipping_

The poor man never knows the cares and responsibilities that beset the man of wealth, and the man without a kodak does not know how keen is the disappointment of a picture missed--be the cause what it may.

Heretofore I have traveled care free for two reasons: one was I never had any money to speak of, and the other was I never carried a camera.

I looked at the superb view, or the picturesque street group, solely for its pa.s.sing interest, with never a thought of locking it up in a black box for the future delectation of my friends, and to bore transient visitors who, as I have noticed, always begin to look up their time tables when the snapshot alb.u.m is produced of a rainy Sunday afternoon.

But this year some one with the glib tongue of a salesman persuaded me of the delights that were consequent on the pressing of a b.u.t.ton, and I purchased a camera of the sort that makes its owner a marked man.

The first two or three days I was as conscious as a man who has just shaved his mustache on a dare, and who expects his wife home from the country any minute. I fancied that every one knew I was a novice, although even I hadn't seen any of my pictures as yet.

I snapped a number of friends on the steamer, and even had the audacity to make the captain look pleasant--but in his case it came natural, and really, when it was printed, even strangers could hear his hearty laugh whenever they looked at the picture, so true to life was it.

Of course it was beginner's luck, but as I went on snapping and getting the films developed I found that I had picked up a fine lens, and the pictures I was taking were really worth while, and then--

Say, have you ever had hen fever? Has your pulse ever quickened at sight of an egg you could call your own? Have you ever breathed hard, when the old hen led forth thirteen fluffy chickens and you reflected that thirteen chickens would reach the egg-laying stage in seven months, and that if each of them hatched out thirteen you would have one hundred and sixty-nine inside of a year--and then have you gone out and bought twenty old hens, so as to have wholesale success--with deplorable results? If you have done all these things you know what a man does whose first snapshots are successful. I laid in supplies of films till my pockets bulged and my purse looked lean.

And the first time the sun shone after landing at 'Derry, I went out to see the Giant's Causeway--and left my camera behind me.

Then I experienced for the first time the sensation as of personal loss, when the views that might have been mine were left where they grew.

On my way back I came on a hardened old sinner of sixty odd years teaching a little kiddie of four to smoke a cigarette. If I had had my camera I could have batted the old man over the head with it. But it was in the hotel.

When I show my views to visitors they will say, "And didn't you go to the Giant's Causeway?" nor will they accept my reason for the lack of a view. And I feel that the set is incomplete.

As time went on I noticed several things that are probably obvious to every amateur. One was that on the days on which I remembered to take my camera I saw very commonplace subjects and only snapped because I had the habit. Another was that no matter how fine the weather was when I set out with my camera, it was sure to cloud up, just as we reached the castle or met the pretty peasant girl, who was only too willing to be taken.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ON THE ROAD TO LISMORE, IN A RAIN STORM]

One day I was walking from Cappoquin to Lismore, all unconscious of what lay before me, and just for wantonness I took trees and pictures that might have been in any country. At last I had but two films left, and then the meeting of several droves of cattle coming from Lismore told me that it must be Fair Day there. Just then lovely, n.o.ble, glorious Lismore castle burst on my view and I had to take it.

And then I came on the fair and saw pictures at every turn.

Funny little donkeys with heads quite buried in burlap bags the while they sought for oats, gay-petticoated and pretty-faced women in groups, grizzled farmers that looked the part, waterb.u.t.ts on wheels in Rembrandtesque pa.s.sageways, leading to sunlit courtyards beyond--regular prize winners if one had any sort of luck.

And then a man with an ingratiating brogue asked me to take him and his cart and almost before I knew it I had taken a sow that weighed all of five hundred pounds, and my snapshooting was over for the day.

You may be sure that next day I went well prepared, but Fair Day is only once a month, and fair days are not much more plentiful, and it rained all day, and the only thing I saw worth taking was a sort of Don Quixote windmill that had been run by a horse probably years before the expression "the curse o' Crummel" (Cromwell) came to be used, and I was in a swiftly moving train and there was a woman in the way--oh! there's no doubt that camerading is fascinating, but it is also vexatious.

Still, my advice to those about to travel is--take a camera. If it's a very rainy Sunday you may want them to leave on an early train.

Tipping is a subject that is always worth discussing. A man does not like to give less than the usual tip, and he ought not to give more, because it makes it hard for the next man, who may not be able to afford much of an expenditure.

Tipping in Ireland is a very mild thing compared to continental tipping. I'll never forget my first experience in Amsterdam. I have spent many agreeable and useful years since then, and the world has been better for my presence, for eighty-four months at least, since that day, but the comic opera features of that first wholesale tipping stand out as if I heard the whole thing last night at some Broadway theater.

There were two of us, and we had spent two delightful days in Amsterdam, doing the picture galleries and confirming Baedeker as hard as we could, and now we must give up the two huge rooms on the first floor that we occupied at the Grand Hotel (to give it a name) and make our way to other Dutch hostelries.

I said to Ma.s.senger, "How about tipping? Does it obtain in Holland?"

"Oh, yes," said Ma.s.senger, with a gleam in his eye. "It obtains all right. You leave it to them."

"How much shall I leave to them?" said I, looking at the small coins I had withdrawn from my pocket.

"Well, we have been royally treated, and there are a good many waiters and chambermaids and 'portiers,' and a proprietor or two, and the equivalent for boots, and the 'bus driver."

"But how are we to get them all?"