IX.] CORN IS APPLICABLE. 



out from their divers shelves and holes and cor- 

 ners, fill a dung-cart. Nature has furnished this 

 valuable production with so complete a covering-, 

 that washings from the purest water cannot add 

 to its cleanness. The husk being stripped off, 

 it is at once ready for the pot. A mess of pease 

 costs three times its real worth in the gathering 

 and shelling; besides, keeping the dinner back, 

 one of the greatest sins ever committed by the lazy 

 and thoughless part of the female kind. Where 

 the dinner is not ready at the proper time, in 

 that house there is no regularity ; and no affairs, 

 either of the gentle or simple, can have any thing 

 like certainty belonging to them. Here the thing 

 is ready of itself; no going to the mill for the 

 poor man during these six weeks ; no trudging 

 about for the labourer of a Sunday morning to 

 get his flour from the mill ; or, nine times out 

 of ten, from the merciless chandler's shop, where 

 nine times out of ten he has it " booked,'' and 

 where he meets nine' times out of ten with a ven- 

 dor and booker, with less mercy in the heart than 

 the devil has in his, even according to the worst 

 accounts that we have of the disposition of that 

 infernal sovereign. The green ears are so ready 

 to the hand, so carefully preserved by nature from 

 all sorts of dirt and filth, that we can hardly see 

 the possibility of dirt being got upon them, even 

 by the unfortunate Irish, who have neither forks 



