worse than yesterday. I felt as if imprisoned. Dr.
Johnson said, it was irksome to be detained thus: yet he seemed to have
less uneasiness, or more patience, than I had. What made our situation
worse here was, that we had no rooms that we could command; for the good
people had no notion that a man could have any occasion but for a mere
sleeping-place; so, during the day, the bed chambers were common to all
the house. Servants eat in Dr. Johnson's; and mine was a kind of general
rendezvous of all under the roof, children and dogs not excepted. As the
gentlemen occupied the parlour, the ladies had no place to sit in,
during the day, but Dr. Johnson's room. I had always some quiet time for
writing in it, before he was up; and, by degrees, I accustomed the
ladies to let me sit in it after breakfast, at my _Journal_, without
minding me.

Dr. Johnson was this morning for going to see as many islands as we
could; not recollecting the uncertainty of the season, which might
detain us in one place for many weeks. He said to me, 'I have more the
spirit of adventure than you.' For my part, I was anxious to get to
Mull, from whence we might almost any day reach the main land.

Dr. Johnson mentioned, that the few ancient Irish gentlemen yet
remaining have the highest pride of family; that Mr. Sandford, a friend
of his, whose mother was Irish, told him, that O'Hara (who was true
Irish, both by father and mother) and he, and Mr. Ponsonby, son to the
Earl of Besborough, the greatest man of the three, but of an English
family, went to see one of those ancient Irish, and that he
distinguished them thus: 'O'Hara, you are welcome! Mr. Sandford, your
mother's son is welcome! Mr. Ponsonby, you may sit down.'

He talked both of threshing and thatching. He said, it was very
difficult to determine how to agree with a thresher. 'If you pay him by
the day's wages, he will thresh no more than he pleases; though to be
sure, the negligence of a thresher is more easily detected than that of
most labourers, because he must always make a sound while he works. If
you pay him by the piece, by the quantity of grain which he produces, he
will thresh only while the grain comes freely, and, though he leaves a
good deal in the ear, it is not worth while to thresh the straw over
again; nor can you fix him to do it sufficiently, because it is so
difficult to prove how much less a man threshes than he ought to do.
Here then is a dilemma: but, for my part, I wo