en ceased
altogether. Gabriel leaned his ten trembling fingers on the tablecloth
and smiled nervously at the company. Meeting a row of upturned faces he
raised his eyes to the chandelier. The piano was playing a waltz tune
and he could hear the skirts sweeping against the drawing-room door.
People, perhaps, were standing in the snow on the quay outside, gazing
up at the lighted windows and listening to the waltz music. The air was
pure there. In the distance lay the park where the trees were weighted
with snow. The Wellington Monument wore a gleaming cap of snow that
flashed westward over the white field of Fifteen Acres.

He began:

"Ladies and Gentlemen,

"It has fallen to my lot this evening, as in years past, to perform a
very pleasing task but a task for which I am afraid my poor powers as a
speaker are all too inadequate."

"No, no!" said Mr. Browne.

"But, however that may be, I can only ask you tonight to take the will
for the deed and to lend me your attention for a few moments while
I endeavour to express to you in words what my feelings are on this
occasion.

"Ladies and Gentlemen, it is not the first time that we have gathered
together under this hospitable roof, around this hospitable board. It is
not the first time that we have been the recipients--or perhaps, I had
better say, the victims--of the hospitality of certain good ladies."

He made a circle in the air with his arm and paused. Everyone laughed or
smiled at Aunt Kate and Aunt Julia and Mary Jane who all turned crimson
with pleasure. Gabriel went on more boldly:

"I feel more strongly with every recurring year that our country has
no tradition which does it so much honour and which it should guard so
jealously as that of its hospitality. It is a tradition that is unique
as far as my experience goes (and I have visited not a few places
abroad) among the modern nations. Some would say, perhaps, that with us
it is rather a failing than anything to be boasted of. But granted even
that, it is, to my mind, a princely failing, and one that I trust will
long be cultivated among us. Of one thing, at least, I am sure. As long
as this one roof shelters the good ladies aforesaid--and I wish from my
heart it may do so for many and many a long year to come--the tradition
of genuine warm-hearted courteous Irish hospitality, which our
forefathers have handed down to us and which we in turn must hand down
to our descendants, is still alive among us."

A