Note 37 — IRISH INNS.

I have visited many small inns, where they never gave a bill, only a verbal—“What your honour pleases!” I once asked a poor innkeeper in Ossory, why he did not make out his bills as other publicans did:—he gave me many reasons for not doing so:—“The gentlemen of the country,” said he, (“God bless them!) often give us nothing at all, and the strange quality generally give us more than we’d ask for; so both ends meet! But,” added he, proceeding to the most decisive reason of all, “there is never a schollard in the house—and the schoolmaster drinks too much punch, plaze your honour, when Mary sends for him, to draw out a bill for us; so we take our chance!”