* * * * *

The text here given is based on that printed in the eighth volume
of the Edinburgh edition of 1761.

[T. S.]

THE

BLUNDERS, DEFICIENCIES, DISTRESSES,

AND MISFORTUNES OF QUILCA.[45]

But one lock and a half in the whole house.

The key of the garden door lost.

The empty bottles all uncleanable.

The vessels for drink few and leaky.

The new house all going to ruin before it is finished.

One hinge of the street door broke off, and the people forced to go out
and come in at the back-door.

The door of the Dean's bed-chamber full of large chinks.

The beaufet letting in so much wind that it almost blows out the
candles.

The Dean's bed threatening every night to fall under him.

The little table loose and broken in the joints.

The passages open over head, by which the cats pass continually into the
cellar, and eat the victuals; for which one was tried, condemned, and
executed by the sword.

The large table in a very tottering condition.

But one chair in the house fit for sitting on, and that in a very ill
state of health.

The kitchen perpetually crowded with savages.

Not a bit of mutton to be had in the country.

Want of beds, and a mutiny thereupon among the servants, till supplied
from Kells.

An egregious want of all the most common necessary utensils.

Not a bit of turf in this cold weather; and Mrs. Johnson[46] and the
Dean in person, with all their servants, forced to assist at the bog, in
gathering up the wet bottoms of old clamps.

The grate in the ladies' bed-chamber broke, and forced to be removed, by
which they were compelled to be without fire; the chimney smoking
intolerably; and the Dean's great-coat was employed to stop the wind
from coming down the chimney, without which expedient they must have
been starved to death.

A messenger sent a mile to borrow an old broken tun-dish.

Bottles stopped with bits of wood and tow, instead of corks.

Not one utensil for a fire, except an old pair of tongs, which travels
through the house, and is likewise employed to take the meat out of the
pot, for want of a flesh-fork.

Every servant an arrant thief as to victuals and drink, and every comer
and goer as arrant a thief of everything he or she can lay their hands
on.

The spit blunted with poking into bogs for timber, and tears the meat to
pieces.

_Bellum atque foeminam_: or, A kitchen war between nurse and