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three guests to the family table; and so, indeed, did it impress Cashel, who little knew that the dinner in question had been devised, planned, and arranged full three weeks before, and the company packed with a degree of care and selection that evinced all the importance of the event. Time was when the Irish capital enjoyed, and justly, the highest reputation for all that constitutes social success; when around the dinner-tables of the city were met men of the highest order of intelligence, men pleased to exercise, without effort or display, all the charm of wit and eloquence, and to make society a brilliant reunion of those gifts which, in the wider sphere of active life, won fame and honors. As the race of these bright conversers died out,--for, alas! they belonged to a past era,--their places were assumed by others of very dissimilar tastes. Many educated at English universities brought back with them to Ireland the more reserved and cautious demeanor of the other country, and thus, if not by their influence, by their mere presence, threw a degree of constraint over the tone of society, which, in destroying its freedom, despoiled it of all its charm. Fashion, that idol of an Englishman's heart, soon became an Irish deity too, and it now grew the "ton" to be English, or at least what was supposed to be such, in dress and manner, in hours, accent, and demeanor. The attempt was never successful; the reserve and placidity which sit with gracefulness on the high-bred Englishman, was a stiff, uncourteous manner in the more cordial and volatile Irishman. His own demeanor was a tree that would not bear grafting, and the fruit lost all its raciness by the admixture. The English officials at the Castle, the little staff of a commander of the forces, a newly-made bishop, fresh from Oxford, even the officers of the last arrived dragoon regiment, became, by right of "accent," the types of manner and breeding in circles where, in the actual enjoyment of social qualities, they were manifestly beneath those over whom they held sway; however, they were stamped at the metropolitan mint, and the competitors were deemed a mere depreciated currency which a few years more would cancel forever. Mrs. Kennyfeck, as a fashionable dinner-giver, of course selected her company from this more choice section; a fact which deserves to be recorded, to the credit of her hospitality; for it was a very rare occurrence indeed, when she found
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