the fat off the back, then cut two pounds of
chops at a shilling a pound, weigh what you
have left, and you will find that to sell these
prime trimmed chops at a shilling a pound is
not a profitable transaction. Our system of
plain cookery is very nice, but very extravagant.
The trimmings which mutton-chops, loins, and
ribs of beef undergo at the butcher's to make
them presentable—a course which consumes a
quantity of meat and fat that, under a more
scientific system of cookery, would be turned
to use—costs a great deal of money. It is
common at the West-end for a butcher to
first weigh ribs of beef, and then trim the
joint at the expense of the purchaser.

As long as prices are moderate and money
is plentiful no one complains; at length the
shoe begins to pinch, and then there are very
irrational protests, and still more irrational
suggestions. There is no remedy but
personal observation and cash payments. Co-
operative societies have successfully taken in hand
the supply of groceries and all sorts of dry
eatables, but amateur butchering will never answer,
nor deputy-butchering either. It is a trade that
requires skill in buying, skill in selling all round,
so as to make a good average, and a degree of
zeal which no deputy will ever exert. Besides,
the trade expenses are enormous; a single night
will often destroy a whole shopful of meat,
reducing the primest joints to the value of
carrion.

In running over this subject—so interesting
to all Londoners who love their dinner—so
difficult to treat in a popular style—we have
passed by the dead meat markets, soon to be
removed from their present close and filthy
quarters to a magnificent new home in West
Smithfield. The dead meat market is supplied
from beasts and sheep killed at the public and
other slaughter-houses by carcase butchers all
the year round. Consignments arrive from
various parts of England, consisting often of
hind-quarters, the inferior fore-quarters being
consumed in the country. In the cold months,
of great consignments of beef and mutton of the
very best quality from Scotland, where the art
of killing, cooling, and packing has been carried
on to great perfection. There are very eminent
butchers who kill no stock, but supply
themselves entirely from the dead meat market. For
what is called a short side of beef— without
brisket, clod, sticking-piece, or shin—they will
give an extra price of a farthing a pound. Of
mutton they will buy chiefly hind-quarters.
Within the last year a great trade in mutton
has also been opened with Holland and North
Germany. But a fuller notice of this dead meat
trade may well wait until the great meat
market is completed.

Our final conclusion is, that the grievance
of dear meat falls chiefly on those who keep
two or more servants, and is due mainly to
their own mismanagement. The customers of
the cutting butchers are not to be imposed on.
They have other resources, and in winter the
competition of Ostend rabbits and other food—
which they will eat, but which "their betters"
will not—prevents any extraordinary rise in
beef and mutton.

CURRAGH COMFORTS

Close along the Curragh edge, but fully an
Irish mile from the site of the camp, straggles
an irregular line of low thatched cottages built
in old Irish fashion. The walls are made of
mud and chopped straw beaten well together;
the roofs have long been covered with many-
coloured lichens and mosses; the chimneys
have settled down on one side; and broad black
or dark-green bands mark where the rain drips
down the whitewashed walls. You stoop to
enter the doorway, and stand upon the earthen
floor. The "ingle nook" is spacious, with an
earthen or stone seat on either side under the
cavernous aperture of the chimney. Here
old men and women sit and smoke. The turf
fire on the floor sends up a steady heat under
the three-legged pot hung by a chain from a
beam across the chimney. It is the duty of a
child or aged person, past more laborious work,
to watch the "praties" as they boil and bubble.
When the skins crack, and a white floury rift
appears, they will be thrown upon a table to
cool. With milk, sweet or sour, and a little
salt, a meal is prepared and eaten hurriedly.
Off the outer room there is usually another,
sometimes two rooms, of very small dimensions.
In these the wooden bedstead runs up close to
the old chest of drawers—an article of furniture
the peasantry are fond of. Old-fashioned
chests of drawers are getting scarce now, for
the emigrant to America endeavours to take one
with him to the new country, and those made of
"real old Irish oak" are not often met with
now. You can scarcely walk between the
bedstead and the wall. The air is close and heavy
with the vapid odour of turf smoke. The
windows, of four small panes—two of them bull's-
eyes—were not made to open, and scarcely
admit light. The air comes through the living
room outside. The roof, unceiled, displays only
blackened rafters supporting still blacker thatch.
Occasionally the second room is parted from
the first only by a low partition, formed of rough
wooden planks or clay. Overhead there is
usually "a loft " stretching half across the
room, and here the hens roost at night, and,
stimulated by the heat, lay eggs now and then in
the hardest winters—and the winters at the
Curragh edge are, in truth, severe, though bracing.
The walls of the two or three rooms are covered
with gaudy pictures, either of religious subjects
or of "Irish heroes," the men of '98, or '48,
or '67, and sometimes of celebrated race-horses
which have made the Curragh trainers famous
on many an English course.

Unwholesome, frouzy, cheerless dwellings
these are at best; yet many a pretty girl comes
hither "to pass her lawful time," and afterwards
to lodge as bride and wife; for whether the
marriage is to be performed by licence or after banns,