A jovial matchmaker grins from his perch atop a traditional Irish jaunting car as a courting couple — the young man's arm draped around his new bride-to-be — ride through a misty Connemara-style valley of thatched cottages and mountain lakes in this charming Edwardian-era artist card signed by John Carey. The scene illustrates the beloved and very real Irish institution of the professional matchmaker, who arranged marriages especially in rural communities well into the twentieth century. Printed in Germany for Fergus O'Connor of Dublin and posted August 18, 1928 from County Mayo or Galway (the postmark is partially legible but reads "Co[nnaught?]"), the card crossed the Atlantic bearing two Éire stamps — a ½d green and a 1d carmine — to reach the Misses McElherne at 4958 Washington Blvd, Chicago, Illinois. The writer, whose name is difficult to fully decipher, enthuses that "Killarney is grandeur itself" and mentions riding to Blarney Castle. A wonderful convergence of Irish social history, diaspora correspondence, and early Irish Free State philately.