In the dwelling of an artizan it was the want of a hot joint and a pudding on Sundays, or the substitution of an occasional dish of potatoes for bread or meat; and sometimes it was the _house_ itself which was uncomfortable from some cause or other. One or two of the very poorest families which I visited were disposed to think they would have comforts in the Union house which they could not afford under their own roofs, although those who were within that establishment declared that they had no comforts at all. An old woman in one of the cottages complained to me that John Snook had stolen one of her geese when it was just ready for the market, and that it would be a great comfort to her if John Snook could be taken and transported. A parish schoolmaster assured me that he had no perfect comfort except in vacation time; the boys when at school were so unruly that he had little peace or comfort except by flogging them. The boys, on the other hand, derived no comfort from being flogged. A sick man told me that a bowl of wine whey would be of the greatest comfort to him; and a woman recovering from fever, whose bed linen had been just changed, spoke within my hearing to her sister of the comfort which she felt in consequence. I hired a brickmaker in the course of that tour, and set off with him for Ireland. When I reached Liverpool, a steamer was about to leave for Wexford. Into this I entered. The steward showed me a comfortable berth, in which I was dreadfully sick during a passage of twenty hours, loathing the sight and smell of food; yet he often came to ask me if there was any little comfort in the way of meat and drink that he could supply. A few days after I had reached home, I went into the cottages of my own workpeople, and there the distinction between them and those of the corresponding class in England in their estimate of what is comfortable, struck me very forcibly. Although the principle which leads most of us to desire something more than we possess in the way of comforts, as they are called--but of extreme luxuries in many instances--operates in the Irish labourer as among nine-tenths of his fellow men, _his_ notions of what is comfortable are truly moderate. One of my ploughmen was at breakfast as I walked into his house. He and his family were seated round a table--it had no cloth I must admit--helping themselves at pleasure from a dish of stirabout, and dipping each spoonful into a mug of milk. This I thought a far more suitable breakfast for them than weak and adulterated tea and white bread, at a much greater expense than an oatmeal diet.