The hospitality part of the business was attended with the success it deserved, and helped to smooth the difficulties of the situation.  I remember well our dinner on the Tuesday night.  On the Monday we dined alone, directors and officers only, but on Tuesday the week’s hospitality began.  That night our table was graced with five or six guests, one being Robert Martin, of Ross, a famous wit and raconteur, and the author of Killaloe.  It was a delightful party, for your Galway gentleman is a genial fellow, who likes a good dinner, and a good story which he tells to perfection.  Sir Ralph never took the head of the table, liking best a less prominent seat; but his seat, wherever he chose to sit, always seemed to be to the central place.  Never lacking natural dignity, he was not punctilious in mere matters of form.  Secure in his authority, to its outward semblance he was rather indifferent.  Another delightful guest was Sir George (then Mr.) Morris, brother of the late Lord Morris, the distinguished judge.  Until a few months previously, Mr. Morris had been a director of the company, but had resigned upon his appointment to the position of Vice-President of the Irish Local Government Board.  He, too, was a Galway man, big, handsome, with a fine flowing beard, a fund of humour, and the most genial disposition imaginable.  His anecdotes were ever welcome, and the smallest incident, embellished by his wit and fancy, and told in his rich brogue, which he loved, were always sufficient to adorn a tale.  He was rare company, and though, perhaps, he could not, like Swift, have written eloquently on a broomstick, he could always talk delightfully on any subject he chose.

Whilst Sir Ralph remained chairman of the company, which he did until the year 1904, the directors annual stay at Ballinasloe and its attendant hospitality continued.  He was not likely to give up a good old custom.  But time inevitably brings changes; for some years now the old hospitality has ceased, the rooms at Ballinasloe are turned into house accommodation for one or two of the staff, and the great fair is worked with no more ado than a hundred other fairs on the line.  Not many complaints are made now, for delays and disappointments are things of the past.  Yet, I dare say there are some who, still attending the fair, look back with regret on the disappearance of the good old days.

Ballinasloe station is on the main line to Galway, 34 miles distant from the “City of the Tribes.”  Galway is the principal western terminus of the Midland railway.  It was once a famous city, but its glory has gone.  In 1831 its population was 33,000; to-day it is 13,000!  Then, measured by inhabitants, it was the fifth town in Ireland; now it is the eighth.  Then it had a large trade with Spain and France, and was a place of note for general trade and commerce; now its harbour is almost idle, and its warehouses and stores nearly empty.  Many of its stately