The difference of the English and Irish character is nowhere more plainly discerned than in their respective kitchens.  With the former, this apartment is probably the cleanest, and certainly the most orderly, in the house.  It is rarely intruded into by those unconnected, in some way, with its business.  Everything it contains is under the vigilant eye of its chief occupant, who would imagine it quite impossible to carry on her business, whether of an humble or important nature, if her apparatus was subjected to the hands of the unauthorised.  An Irish kitchen is devoted to hospitality in every sense of the word.  Its doors are open to almost all loungers and idlers; and the chances are that Billy Bawn, the cripple, or Judy Molloy, the deaf old hag, are more likely to know where to find the required utensil than the cook herself.  It is usually a temple dedicated to the goddess of disorder; and, too often joined with her, is the potent deity of dirt.  It is not that things are out of their place, for they have no place.  It isn’t that the floor is not scoured, for you cannot scour dry mud into anything but wet mud.  It isn’t that the chairs and tables look filthy, for there are none.  It isn’t that the pots, and plates, and pans don’t shine, for you see none to shine.  All you see is a grimy, black ceiling, an uneven clay floor, a small darkened window, one or two unearthly-looking recesses, a heap of potatoes in the corner, a pile of turf against the wall, two pigs and a dog under the single dresser, three or four chickens on the window-sill, an old cock moaning on the top of a rickety press, and a crowd of ragged garments, squatting, standing, kneeling, and crouching, round the fire, from which issues a babel of strange tongues, not one word of which is at first intelligible to ears unaccustomed to such eloquence.

And yet, out of these unfathomable, unintelligible dens, proceed in due time dinners, of which the appearance of them gives no promise.  Such a kitchen was Mrs. Kelly’s; and yet, it was well known and attested by those who had often tried the experiment, that a man need think it no misfortune to have to get his dinner, his punch, and his bed, at the widow’s.

Above stairs were two sitting-rooms and a colony of bed-rooms, occupied indiscriminately by the family, or by such customers as might require them.  If you came back to dine at the inn, after a day’s shooting on the bogs, you would probably find Miss Jane’s work-box on the table, or Miss Meg’s album on the sofa; and, when a little accustomed to sojourn at such places, you would feel no surprise at discovering their dresses turned inside out, and hanging on the pegs in your bed-room; or at seeing their side-combs and black pins in the drawer of your dressing-table.