I can understand your astonishment at reading this, Kitty; but is it not another proof that Ireland is far behind the rest of the world in civilization? The systems exploded everywhere are still pursued there, and the unprofitable learning that all other countries have abandoned is precisely the object of hardest study and ambition. There are twenty other things that I wished to consult my dearest Kitty about, but I must conclude. It is now nigh eleven o'clock, the moon is rising, and we are off on our excursion to the Drachenfels,--for you must know that one of the stereotyped amusements of the Continent is to ascend mountains for the sake of seeing daybreak from the "summit" It is frequently a failure as regards the picturesque; but never so with respect to the pleasure of the trip. Think of a mountain path by moonlight, Kitty; your mule slowly toiling up the steep ascent, while some one near murmurs "Childe Harold" in your ear, the perils of the way permitting a hundred little devotional attentions so suggestive of dependence and protection. I must break off,--they are calling for me; and I have but time to write myself my dearest Kitty's dearest friend, Mart Anne Dodd. LETTER XIX. BETTY COBB TO MRS. SHUSAN O'SHEA, PRIEST'S HOUSE, BRUFF. Dear Misses Shusan,--I thought before this I 'd be back again in Bruff, but I leave it all to Providence, that maybe, all the time, is thinkin' little about me. It's not out of any unpiety I say this, but bekase the longer I live the more I see how sarvants are trated in this world; and the next I 'm towld is much the same. If the mistress would let me alone, I 'd get used to the ways of the place at last, for there 's some things is n't so bad at all; since we came to this we have four males every day, but, if you mind grace, you might as well have none. They've a puddin' for everything, fish--flesh--fowl--vegebles, it's all alike; but the hardest thing is to eat blackberries with beef, or stewed pork with rasberries; not to spake of a pike with pine-apple, that we had yesterday. There is always an abundance and a confusion at dinner that's plazing to one's feelin's; for, indeed, in Ireland there is no great variety in the servants' hall, and polatics has a sameness in them that's very tiresome.