Inasmuch as I am just now contradicted by peers in the columns of the _Daily News_ itself, and attacked--I must add, in very courteous as well as brilliant style--by a leader writer of the _Irish Times_, and held up to public opprobrium at Sunday meetings, I thought it well to submit the foregoing to a friend, born and bred in Ireland, before committing it to print. Where, except so far as the retainer is concerned, I was obliged to depend so much on hearsay evidence, I thought it just possible that I might have selected an extreme case instead of a fair type of what I have ventured to call the African system. I am quite reassured. My friend, who is an accomplished and experienced Irishman, tainted only by a very few years' residence in England, assures me that I have considerably understated the wild, wasteful profusion, slothfulness, and dirt of the old-fashioned chieftain's kitchen. He assures me that families are now abroad in the world without an acre of land or a halfpenny beyond their earnings, who, within his recollection, have been "ruined by their kitchen,"--literally eaten up by hungry retainers and tenants. He mentioned one family in particular, whose income sank from 12,000l. to nothing a year under the ancient system which united almost every possible defect. The tenants were not, it is true, charged a heavy rent in money, because civilisation had not advanced quite so far as the commutation of all dues into cash; but "duty work" was as strictly exacted on the lord's farm as it is now on some estates when coal is to be drawn, and "duty" tribute in kind was levied as well. Thus the tenant was obliged not only to cultivate the "ould masther's" land, but to give him at Christmas tide a "duty" pig and "duty" geese and fowls according to a fixed percentage. My friend, whose position places his assertion above all doubt, assures me that in old leases it is quite common to find a sum of money specified as the equivalent of a "duty" hog; and other tribute of similar kind. The "ould masther," whose bailiffs looked sharply after "duty" of all descriptions, himself dispensed the indiscriminate hospitality already described, and "masther" and man floundered in the slough of debt and poverty together, making light of occasional hardship. All this feudal fellowship has gone with the old chieftains, whom the people profess to admire, and compare regretfully with the new men who expect to pay and be paid. But I am reminded that I have omitted to mention an important factor in the older polity of Ireland. The opposite ends of the social chain were brought together by that time-honoured ensign and instrument of authority, one end of which was in the master's hand and the other in the man's ribs or across his shoulders. It was "the shtick" which kept things together so far as they were kept so at all. The descendants of the masters say little or nothing about the good old custom of their forefathers in "laying about them with their