My host, who would not allow me to leave Castle F---- that night, passed much of the evening in reading the papers of that day, standing at intervals with his back to the fire, which comfort he seemed to enjoy extremely, while I threw in a word now and then to him or his lady, to whom I detailed the receipt for making catsup from nettles, as it appears in my Cyclopædia of Agriculture. “This economical method of making catsup,” she was pleased to say, “would be a great comfort to the poor;” and so it would, as I ventured to observe, if they had any thing to eat that required such sauce. I was conducted at night to a bedroom, with large mirrors, a pair of wax candles on the dressing-table, a luxurious chair placed opposite the fire, and an immensely high bedstead, curtained with damask satin. Being subject to the nightmare, I mounted this (by a step-ladder) with fear and trembling, lest I should roll out in the night; and the apprehension of this calamity in a strange house, and among great people, kept me from sleeping all night, and rendered me extremely uncomfortable. I could not help thinking what Mrs Doyle and the children would say if they saw me tucked under such fine bed-clothes, and stretched under such a grand canopy; and to tell the truth, I wished myself safely out of it, and in my own crib at Ballyorley. Yet to the obliging inquiries of my entertainers, on the ensuing morning, “if my bed had been comfortable?” I was unable to say No. But what _are_ comforts? thought I to myself all the time. Indeed, the consideration of this question has occupied my mind a good deal since, for I find the notions attached to the term “comfort” are infinitely varied. When I left Castle F----, the weather was cold; I mounted, however, the roof of a coach, and proceeded with many other passengers for Salisbury. We had not gone far when rain fell in torrents, driven by a piercing blast; umbrellas and coats were not waterproof, and when we alighted at the inn-door at Salisbury, there were none of the _outsides_ who were not more or less wet and miserable. Four of us determined to remain at the inn all night; and as we threw off dripping cloaks and mufflers, and approached a blazing fire in a small snug parlour, where a cloth, and knives and forks, and a plate-warmer, gave indications of a hot dinner, we all agreed that this was true comfort; nor was this opinion changed when soon afterwards we sat in dry clothes by a fire, with--but let no one mention this to Father Mathew--a hot tumbler of brandy punch before each of us.