THE REAL CHARLOTTE. 



CHAPTER I. 



An August Sunday afternoon in the north side of Dublin. 

 Epitome of all that is hot, arid, and empty. Tall brick 

 houses, browbeating each other in gloomy respectability 

 across the white streets ; broad pavements, promenaded 

 mainly by the nomadic cat ; stifling squares, wherein the 

 infant of unfashionable parentage is taken for the daily 

 baking that is its substitute for the breezes and the press of 

 perambulators on the Bray Esplanade or the Kingston pier. 

 Few towns are duller out of the season than Dubhn, but 

 the dullness of its north side neither waxes nor wanes ; it is 

 immutable, unchangeable, fixed as the stars. So at least 

 it appears to the observer whose impressions are only eye- 

 deep, and are derived from the emptiness of the streets, the 

 unvarying dirt of the window panes, and the almost for- 

 gotten type of ugliness of the window curtains. 



But even an August Sunday in the north side has its 

 distractions for those who know where to seek them, and 

 there are some of a sufficiently ingenuous disposition to find 

 in Sunday-school a social excitement that is independent of 

 fashion, except so far as its slow eddies may have touched 

 the teacher's bonnet. Perhaps it is peculiar to Dublin that 

 Sunday-school, as an institution, is by no means reserved 

 for children of the poorer sort only, but permeates all ranks, 

 and has as many recruits from the upper and middle as 

 from the lower classes. Certainly the excellent Mrs. Fitz- 

 patrick, of Number O, Mountjoy Square, as she lay in 

 mountainous repose on the sofa in her dining-room, had 

 no thought that it was derogatory to the dignity of her 



A 



