SOME JAR ViY STORIES.
[To ram tenon or in "firsersroan
13111,—Your interesting review of Mr. Alexis Roche's book in last week's Spectator tempts me to offer you a few anecdotes of the Dublin "jarvey." A great many years ago the Dublin municipal authority fixed the jarvey's fare for a "set-down" at six-pence for any distance within the city boundaries, the city being an irregular oval about two miles long by a little over a mile broad. " Jarvey " did not like this, tut submitted in the hope that more " fares " would take short "set-downs" than long ones and so the average would be made good ; but if any passenger tendered a sixpence he (or she) was liable to be taunted. An old lady whom I knew once took a car to a bridge over the Grand Canal, which is the southern boundary of Dnblin. The jarvey, on receiving the sixpence, held it oat in his palm and said : "Well! God be wid the times When the quality lived in houses. It's on the brudges they do be mostly living nowadays." A stingy passenger once took a jarvey nearly the whole length of the city and got set down at the South Dublin Union Workhouse The jarvey spat on the sixpence and asked, "Was yer 'honour going inside to stop? " " No!" was the indignant reply. "Because if you war, I'd have let you off that much," quoth darrey sarcastically. But Jarvey does not always win the doeL The last Marquis of Drogheda once had occasion to take a car from King's Bridge Station to the Kildare Street Club—a good deal more than half the longer diameter of the city. The land agitation of 1890 was then at its height, and the Marquis was one of the landlord leaders. Jarvey recog- nized him, and began (as jerseys are apt to do) to talk on the news of the day. "Now, my Lord, wouldn't any one think that the Government valuation was enough lint for any poor man to pay?" The Marquis did not argue, but on arriving at the club handed jarvey the regulation sixpence. "Oh, lbeggin' your Lordship's pardon, what'. that, my Lord?" " Government valuation, my friend—Government valuation!"
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