In my letter to my mother of the 8th I forgot--no, I had not time to say
that we had a restive mare at Dunshaughlin, who paid me for all I ever
wrote about Irish posting, and put me in the most horrible and
reasonable apprehension that she would have broken my aunt's carriage to
pieces against the corner of a wall. The crowd of people that assembled,
the shouts, the "never fears," the scolding of the landlord and
postillions, and the group surveying the scene, was beyond anything I
could or can paint. The stage coach drove to the door in the midst of
it, and ladies and bandboxes stopped, and all stood to gaze.
There was also a professional fool in his ass cart with two dogs, one a
white little curly dog, who sat upon the ass's head behind his ears, and
another a black shaggy mongrel, with longish ears, who sat up in a
begging attitude on the hinder part of the ass, and whom the fool-knave
had been tutoring with a broken crutch, as he sat in his covered cart.
Fanny made a drawing of him, and he and his dogs _sat_ for a fivepenny,
which I honestly gave him for his and his dogs' tricks.
* * * * *
Steamboats had only begun to ply between Dublin and Holyhead in 1819,
and Maria Edgeworth's first experience of a steamboat was in crossing
now to Holyhead. She disliked the _jigging_ motion, which she said was
like the shake felt in a carriage when a pig is scratching himself
against the hind wheel while waiting at an Irish inn door.
* * * * *
MARIA _to_ MISS HONORA EDGEWORTH.