“It was hard to tell whether the inside or the outside of their house was worse;—­within, it would amost turn your stomach to look at it—­the flure was all dirt, for how could it be any other way, when at the end of every meal the schrahag* would be emptied down on it, and the pig, that was whining and grunting about the door, would brake into the hape of praty-skins that Sally would there throw down for it.  You might reel Larry’s shirt, or make a surveyor’s chain of it; for, bad cess (* Bad success) to me, but I bleeve it would reach from this to the Bath.  The blanket was in tatthers, and, like the shirt, would go round the house:  their straw-beds were stocked with the black militia—­the childer’s heads were garrisoned with Scotch greys, and their heels and heads ornamented with all description of kibes.  There wor only two stools in all the house, and a hassock of straw for the young child, and one of the stools wanted a leg, so that it was dangerous for a stranger to sit down upon it, except he knew of this failing.  The flure was worn into large holes, that were mostly filled up with slop, where the childher used to daddle about, and amuse themselves by sailing egg-shells upon them, with bits of boiled praties in them, by way of a little faste.  The dresser was as black as dirt could make it, and had on it only two or three wooden dishes, clasped with tin, and noggins without hoops, a beetle, and some crockery.  There was an ould chest to hold their male, but it wanted the hinges; and the childher, when they’d get the mother out, would mix a sup of male and wather in a noggin, and stuff themselves with it, raw and all, for they were almost starved.

“Then, as the cow-house had never been kept in repair, the roof fell in, and the cow and pig had to stand in one end of the dwelling-house; and, except Larry did it, whatever dirt the same cow and pig, and the childher to the back of that, were the occasion of, might stand there till Saturday night, when, for dacency’s sake, Sally herself would take a shovel, and out with it upon the hape that was beside the sink before the door.  If a wet day came, there wasn’t a spot you could stand in for down-rain; and wet or dry, Sally, Larry, and the childher were spotted like trouts with the soot-dhrops, made by the damp of the roof and the smoke.  The house on the outside was all in ridges of black dirt, where the thatch had rotted, or covered over with chickenweed or blind-oats; but in the middle of all this misery they had a horseshoe nailed over the door-head for good luck.

“You know, that in telling this story, I needn’t mintion everything just as it happened, laying down year after year, or day and date; so you may suppose, as I go on, that all this went forward in the coorse cf time.  They didn’t get bad of a sudden, but by degrees, neglecting one thing after another, until they found themselves in the state I’m relating to you—­then struggling and struggling, but never taking the right way to mend.