A messenger sent a mile to borrow an old broken tun-dish.
Bottles stopped with bits of wood and tow, instead of corks.
Not one utensil for a fire, except an old pair of tongs, which travels through the house, and is likewise employed to take the meat out of the pot, for want of a flesh-fork.
Every servant an arrant thief as to victuals and drink, and every comer and goer as arrant a thief of everything he or she can lay their hands on.
The spit blunted with poking into bogs for timber, and tears the meat to pieces.
Bellum atque foeminam: or, A kitchen war between nurse and a nasty crew of both sexes; she to preserve order and cleanliness, they to destroy both; and they generally are conquerors.
April 28. This morning the great fore-door quite open, dancing backwards and forwards with all its weight upon the lower hinge, which must have been broken if the Dean had not accidentally come and relieved it.
A great hole in the floor of the ladies' chamber, every hour hazarding a broken leg.
Two damnable iron spikes erect on the Dean's bedstead, by which he is in danger of a broken shin at rising and going to bed.
The ladies' and Dean's servants growing fast into the manners and thieveries of the natives; the ladies themselves very much corrupted; the Dean perpetually storming, and m danger of either losing all his flesh, or sinking into barbarity for the sake of peace.