Page:Annalsoffaminein00nich.djvu/202

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196
ANNALS OF THE

set fire to a multitude of casks of contraband spirits. The explosion so frightened the jolly inmates, that they fled in dreadful terror from the ruins, and they now stand as that night's festival left them, giving the solitary advantage of showing the thickness of the walls, and the curious construction of a building, whose true origin has not been certainly defined. Once, it was a spot of proud grandeur; now a heap of desolation marks the whole for many a mile, where gardens and groves once were planted.

Wednesday morning, at five, I took a car for Bangor, met the mail-coach, and went through a cold, dreary country for twenty miles, to Crossmolina. A little cultivation and a few trees tell the traveler that the town is near. Six miles further we reached the hospitable house of Peter Kelly, mentioned in these pages—and surely no character is better deserved than is his for that excellent trait; and the kindness I received under his roof never can be forgotten. Such families should live in the records of history as pleasant mementoes for the grateful, and examples for the parsimonious, that if such can be taught, they may have the benefit of using hospitality without grudging. The cheerful sacrifices made in the house, that I might not only stay, but be made comfortable, were so in contrast with the pinching and squeezing which often is met in families of the "would-be-thought hospitable," that surely it might be said, that he descended from a generous stock, as instinct not cultivation seemed entirely the spring of action in him.