or's house to another, gosthering and palavering about what
doesn't consarn her, instead of minding the house. How can I have heart
to work, when I come in--expecting to find my dinner ready; but, instead
of that, get her sitting upon her hunkers on the hearthstone; blowing at
two or three green sticks with her apron, the pot hanging on the crook,
without even the white horses on it.* She never puts a stitch in my
clothes, nor in the childher's clothes, nor in her own, but lets them
go to rags at once--the divil's luck to her! I wish I had never met with
her, or that I had married a sober girl, that wasn't fond of dress and
dancing. If she was a good sarvint, it was only because she liked to
have a good name; for when she got a house and place of her own, see how
she turned out!'

* The white horses are produced by the extrication of air,
which rises in white bubbles to the surface when the
potatoes are beginning to boil; so that when the first
symptoms of boiling commence, it is a usual phrase to say,
the white horses are on the pot--sometimes the white friars.

"From less to more, they went on squabbling and fighting, until at last
you might see Sally one time with a black eye or a cut head, or another
time going off with herself, crying, up to Tom Hance's or some other
neighbor's house, to sit down and give a history of the ruction that
he and she had on the head of some trifle or another that wasn't worth
naming. Their childher were shows, running about without a single stitch
upon them, except ould coats that some of the sarvints from the big
house would throw them. In these they'd go sailing about,with the long
skirts trailing on the ground behind them; and sometimes Larry would be
mane enough to take the coat from the gorsoon, and ware it himself. As
for giving them any schooling, 'twas what they never thought of;
but even if they were inclined to it, there was no school in the
neighborhood to send them to, for God knows it's the counthry that was
in a neglected state as to schools in those days, as well as now.

"It's a thrue saying, that as the ould cock crows the young one larns;
and this was thrue here, for the childher fought one another like so
many divils, and swore like Trojans--Larry, along with everything else,
when he was a Brine-oge, thought it was a manly thing to be a great
swearer; and the childher, when they got able to swear, warn't worse nor
their father. At first, whe