should have tay enough to sarve them, and loaf-bread and punch; and
though Larry should sell a sack of seed-oats or seed-potatoes to get
it, no doubt but there should be a bottle of wine, to thrate the young
ladies or gintlemen.

"When their childre grew up, little care was taken of them, bekase their
parents minded other people's business more nor their own. They were
always in the greatest poverty and distress; for Larry would be killing
time about the Squire's, or doing some handy job for a neighbor who
could get no other man to do it. They now fell behind entirely in the
rint, and Larry got many hints from the Squire that if he didn't pay
more attention to his business, he must look after his arrears, or
as much of it as he could make up from the cattle and the crop. Larry
promised well, as far as words went, and no doubt hoped to be able to
perform; but he hadn't steadiness to go through with a thing. Thruth's
best;--you see both himself and his wife neglected their business in the
beginning, so that everything went at sixes and sevens. They then found
themselves uncomfortable at their own hearth, and had no heart to labor:
so that what would make a careful person work their fingers to the
stumps to get out of poverty, only prevented _them_ from working at all,
or druv them to work for those that had more comfort, and could give
them a better male's mate than they had themselves.

"Their tempers, now, soon began to get sour: Larry thought, bekase Sally
wasn't as careful as she ought to be, that if he had taken any other
young woman to his wife, he wouldn't be as he was;--she thought the
very same thing of Larry. 'If he was like another,' she would say to his
brother, 'that would be up airly and late at his own business, I would
have spirits to work, by rason it would cheer my heart to see our little
farm looking as warm and comfortable as anothers; but, _fareer gairh_
(* bitter misfortune) that's not the case, nor likely to be so, for he
spinds his time from one place to another, working for them that laughs
at him for his pains; but he'd rather go to his neck in wather than lay
down a hand for himself, except when he can't help it.'

"Larry, again, had his complaint--'Sally's a lazy trollop,' he would
say to his brother's wife, 'that never does one hand's turn that she
can help, but sits over the fire from morning till night, making bird's
nests in the ashes with her yallow heels, or going about from one
neighb