lure 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.

"But where's the use in saying much more about it?--things couldn't
stand--they were terribly in arrears; but the landlord was a good kind
of man, and, for the sake of the poor childher, didn't wish to turn them
on the wide world, without house or shelter, bit or sup. Larry, too, had
been, and still was, so ready to do difficult and nice jobs for him, and
would resave no payment, that he couldn't think of taking his only
cow from him or prevent him from raising a bit of oats' or a plat of
potatoes