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.  We had walked together to his house, or rather cottage, for he was not a fixed resident, but came there for summer quarters.  The neatness, and even elegance, of the domestic arrangements of his temporary establishment, both without and within the dwelling, gave token of a taste many degrees removed from the state of people far back in civilization.  Presently the ladies came; and their national frankness, modified by the most entire and unaffected simplicity, puzzled my friend completely.  In due season the dressing-bell sent us off to prepare for dinner; and while we were getting ready, my companion said, “I see what this fellow is at:  he means to sew you and me up.  You may do as you please; but I’ll be shot if he plays off his Irish pranks on me.  I will eat his dinner, take a couple of glasses of his wine, make my bow to the ladies, go on board by eight or nine o’clock, and, having given them a dinner in return, shall have done my duty in the way of attention; after which I shall totally cut the connection.  I have no idea of their abominable fashion of forcing strangers to drink.”

“We shall see,” said I; and having knocked the dust off our shoes, down we went to dinner.

Everything was plain, and suitable to the pretensions of a cottage.  There was no pressing to eat or drink during dinner; and in process of time the cloth was removed, the Ladies sipped a little sweet wine, and disappeared.

“Now for it,” whispered my friend; “he has sent the women out of the way, that he may ply us the better.”

And I must own things looked rather suspicious; for our host, instead of sitting down again at the dinner-table, walked to a bow-window overlooking the anchorage, and exactly facing the setting sun, at that hour illuminating the whole landscape in the gorgeous style peculiar to combined mountain and lake scenery.  “Why should we not enjoy this pleasant prospect while we are discussing our wine?” said the master of the house.  At that instant the door opened, and in walked the servant, as if he knew by intuition what was passing in his master’s head.