A night out : It wasn’t much crack for everyone though … Mickey Deany fired the logs on like the blazes …. "Hell rub it up them …."

Across the valley lived a neighbouring family, the Ponsonbys. The DeVeres had not much to do with them, but naturally their paths crossed during the odd soirees of the County. The Ponsonbys were vain, dissatisfied people, who resented the fact that their estate was small and that no matter how greatly the tenantry and cotters were squeezed, they had insufficient funds to pay themselves an annual season in "Town", by which they meant London. Here is what Young had to record after a few evenings spent in the company of the Ponsonbys and their like : "If from the lowest class we rise to the highest, all there is gaiety, pleasure, luxury, and extravagance ; the town life at Dublin is formed on the model of that of London. Every night in the winter there is a ball or a party, where the polite circle meet, not to enjoy but to sweat each other ; a great crowd crammed into twenty feet square gives a zest to the agréments of small talk and whist. There are four or five houses large enough to receive a company commodiously, but the rest are so small as to make parties detestable. There is, however, an agreable society in Dublin, in which a man of large fortune will not find his time heavy..." (Arthur Young's Tour of Ireland (1776-1779), Vol. II, p. 48).