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The House

by Eugene Field · English · Gutenberg #21808 · 291,429 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The House

Author: Eugene Field


        
Release date: June 11, 2007 [eBook #21808]
                Most recently updated: January 2, 2021

Language: English

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The Works of Eugene Field

Vol. VIII

The Writings in Prose and Verse of Eugene Field

THE HOUSE

An Episode in the Lives of Reuben Baker, Astronomer, and of His Wife
Alice







[Frontispiece: The House.  Drawn by E. H. Garrett.]




Charles Scribner's Sons
New York
1911

Copyright, 1896, by
Julia Sutherland Field.




INTRODUCTION

The story that is told in this volume is as surely an autobiography as
if that announcement were a part of the title: and it also has the
peculiar and significant distinction of being in some sort the
biography of every man and woman who enters seriously upon the business
of life.

In its pages is to be found the history of the heart's desire of all
who are disposed to take the partnership of man and woman seriously.
The instinct--the desire--call it what you will--that is herein set
forth with such gentle humor is as old as humanity, and all literature
that contains germs of permanence teems with its influence.  But never
before has it had so painstaking a biographer--so deft and subtle an
interpreter.

We are told, alas! that the story of Alice and Reuben Baker wanted but
one chapter to complete it when Eugene Field died.  That chapter was to
have told how they reached the fulfilment of their heart's desire.  But
even here the unities are preserved.  The chapter that is unwritten in
the book is also unwritten in the lives of perhaps the great majority
of men and women.

The story that Mr. Field has told portrays his genius and his humor in
a new light.  We have seen him scattering the germs of his wit
broadcast in the newspapers--we have seen him putting on the cap and
bells, as it were, to lead old Horace through some modern paces--we
have heard him singing his tender lullabies to children--we have wept
with him over "Little Boy Blue," and all the rest of those quaint
songs--we have listened to his wonderful stories--but only in the story
of "The House" do we find his humor so gently turned, so deftly put,
and so ripe for the purpose of literary expression.  It lies deep here,
and those who desire to enjoy it as it should be enjoyed must place
their ears close to the heart of human nature.  The wit and the
rollicking drollery that were but the surface indications of Mr.
Field's genius have here given place to the ripe humor that lies as
close to tears as to laughter--the humor that is a part and a large
part of almost every piece of English literature that has outlived the
hand that wrote it.

JOEL CHANDLER HARRIS.




The Chapters in this Book


     I  WE BUY A PLACE
    II  OURSELVES AND OUR NEIGHBORS
   III  WE MAKE OUR BARGAIN KNOWN
    IV  THE FIRST PAYMENT
     V  WE NEGOTIATE A MORTGAGE
    VI  I AM BESOUGHT TO BUY THINGS
   VII  OUR PLANS FOR IMPROVEMENTS
  VIII  THE VANDALS BEGIN THEIR WORK
    IX  NEIGHBOR MACLEOD'S THISTLE
     X  COLONEL DOLLER'S GREAT IDEA
    XI  I MAKE A STAND FOR MY RIGHTS
   XII  I AM DECEIVED IN MR. WAX
  XIII  EDITOR WOODSIT A TRUE FRIEND
   XIV  THE VICTIM OF AN ORDINANCE
    XV  THE QUESTION OF INSURANCE
   XVI  NEIGHBOR ROBBINS' PLATYPUS
  XVII  OUR DEVICES FOR ECONOMIZING
 XVIII  I STATE MY VIEWS ON TAXATION
   XIX  OTHER PEOPLE'S DOGS
    XX  I ACQUIRE POISON AND EXPERIENCE
   XXI  WITH PLUMBERS AND PAINTERS
  XXII  THE BUTLER'S PANTRY
 XXIII  ALICE'S NIGHT WATCHMAN
  XXIV  DRIVEWAYS AND WALL PAPERS
   XXV  AT LAST WE ENTER OUR HOUSE




THE HOUSE


I

WE BUY A PLACE

It was either Plato the Athenian, or Confucius the Chinese, or
Andromachus the Cretan--or some other philosopher whose name I
disremember--that remarked once upon a time, and the time was many
centuries ago, that no woman was happy until she got herself a home.  It
really makes no difference who first uttered this truth, the truth itself
is and always has been recognized as one possessing nearly all the
virtues of an axiom.

I recall that one of the first wishes I heard Alice express during our
honeymoon was that we should sometime be rich enough to be able to build
a dear little house for ourselves.  We were poor, of course; otherwise
our air castle would not have been "a dear little house"; it would have
been a palatial residence with a dance-hall at the top and a wine-cellar
at the bottom thereof.  I have always observed that when the money comes
in the poetry flies out.  Bread and cheese and kisses are all well enough
for poverty-stricken romance, but as soon as a poor man receives a
windfall his thoughts turn inevitably to a contemplation of the
probability of terrapin and canvasbacks.

I encouraged Alice in her fond day-dreaming, and we decided between us
that the dear little house should be a cottage, about which the roses and
the honeysuckles should clamber in summer, and which in winter should be
banked up with straw and leaves, for Alice and I were both of New England
origin.  I must confess that we had some reason for indulging these
pleasing speculations, for at that time my Aunt Susan was living, and she
was reputed as rich as mud (whatever that may mean), and this simile was
by her neighbors coupled with another, which represented Aunt Susan as
being as close as a clapboard on a house.  Whatever her reputation was, I
happened to be Aunt Susan's nearest of kin, and although I never so far
lost my presence of mind as to intimate even indirectly that I had any
expectations, I wrote regularly to Aunt Susan once a month, and every
fall I sent her a box of game, which I told her I had shot in the woods
near our boarding-house, but which actually I had bought of a commission
merchant in South Water Street.

With the legacy which we were to receive from Aunt Susan, Alice and I had
it all fixed up that we should build a cottage like one which Alice had
seen one time at Sweet Springs while convalescing at that fashionable
Missouri watering-place from an attack of the jaundice.  This cottage
was, as I was informed, an ingenious combination of Gothic decadence and
Norman renaissance architecture.  Being somewhat of an antiquarian by
nature, I was gratified by the promise of archaism which Alice's picture
of our future home presented.  We picked out a corner lot in,--well, no
matter where; that delectable dream, with its Gothic and Norman features,
came to an untimely end all too soon.  At its very height Aunt Susan up
and died, and a fortnight later we learned that, after bequeathing the
bulk of her property to foreign missions, she had left me, whom she had
condescended to refer to as her "beloved nephew," nine hundred dollars in
cash and her favorite flower-piece in wax, a hideous thing which for
thirty years had occupied the corner of honor in the front spare chamber.

I do not know what Alice did with the wax-flowers.  As for the nine
hundred dollars, I appropriated it to laudable purposes.  Some of it went
for a new silk dress for Alice; the rest I spent for books, and I recall
my thrill of delight when I saw ensconced upon my shelves a splendid copy
of Audubon's "Birds" with its life-size pictures of turkeys, buzzards,
and other fowl done in impossible colors.

After that experience "our house" simmered and shrivelled down from the
Norman-Gothic to plain, everyday, fin-de-siècle architecture.  We
concluded that we could get along with five rooms (although six would be
better), and we transferred our affections from that corner lot in the
avenue which had engaged our attention during the decadent-renaissance
phase of our enthusiasm to a modest point in Slocum's Addition, a
locality originally known as Slocum's Slough, but now advertised and
heralded by the press and rehabilitated in public opinion as Paradise
Park.  This pleasing mania lasted about two years.  Then it was forever
abated by the awful discovery that Paradise Park was the breeding spot of
typhoid fever, and, furthermore, that old man Slocum's title to the
property was defective in every essential particular.

Alice and I did not find it in our power either to overlook or to combat
these trifling objections; with unabated optimism we cast our eyes
elsewhere, and within a month we found another delectable biding
place--this time some distance from the city--in fact, in one of the new
and booming suburbs.  Elmdale was then new to fame.  I suppose they
called it Elmdale because it had neither an elm nor a dale.  It was
fourteen miles from town, but its railroad transportation facilities were
unique.  The five-o'clock milk-train took passengers in to business every
morning, and the eight-o'clock accommodation brought them home again
every evening; moreover, the noon freight stopped at Elmdale to take up
passengers every other Wednesday, and it was the practice of every other
train to whistle and to slack up in speed to thirty miles an hour while
passing through this promising suburb.

I did not care particularly for Elmdale, but Alice took a mighty fancy to
it.  Our twin boys (Galileo and Herschel, named after the astronomers of
blessed memory!) were now three years old, and Alice insisted that they
required the pure air and the wholesome freedom of rural life.  Galileo
had, in fact, never quite been himself since he swallowed the pincushion.

We did not go to Elmdale at once; we never went there.  Elmdale was
simply another one of those curious phases in which our dream of a home
abounded.  With the Elmdale phase "our house" underwent another change.
But this was natural enough.  You see that in none of our other plans had
we contemplated the possibility of a growing family.  Now we had two
uproarious boys, and their coming had naturally put us into pleasing
doubt as to what similar emergencies might transpire in the future.  So
our five-room cottage had acquired (in our minds) two more rooms--seven
altogether--and numerous little changes in the plans and decorations of
"our house" had gradually been evolved.

As I now remember, it was about this time that Alice made up her mind
that the reception-room should be treated in blue.  Her birth had
occurred in December, and therefore turquoise was her birth-stone and the
blue thereof was her favorite color.  I am not much of a believer in such
things--in fact, I discredit all superstitions except such as involve
black cats and the rabbit's foot, and these exceptions are wholly
reasonable, for my family lived for many years in Salem, Mass.  But I
have always conceded that Alice has as good a right to her superstitions
as I to mine.  I bought her the prettiest turquoise ring I could afford,
and I approved her determination to treat the reception-room in blue.  I
rather enjoyed the prospect of the luxury of a reception-room; it had
ground the iron into my soul that, ever since we married and settled
down, Alice and I had been compelled in winter months to entertain our
callers in the same room where we ate our meals.  In summer this
humiliation did not afflict us, for then we always sat of an evening on
the front porch.

The blue room met with a curious fate.  One Christmas our beneficent
friend, Colonel Mullaly, presented Alice and me with a beautiful and
valuable lamp.  Alice went to Burley's the next week and priced one (not
half as handsome) and was told that it cost sixty dollars.  It was a
tall, shapely lamp, with an alabaster and Italian marble pedestal
cunningly polished; a magnificent yellow silk shade served as the
crowning glory to this superb creation.

For a week, perhaps, Alice was abstracted; then she told me that she had
been thinking it all over and had about made up her mind that when we got
our new house she would have the reception-room treated in a delicate
canary shade.

"But why abandon the blue, my dear?" I asked.  "I think it would be so
pretty to have the decoration of the room match your turquoise ring."

"That 's just like a man!" said Alice.  "Reuben, dear, could you possibly
imagine anything else so perfectly horrid as a yellow lampshade in a blue
room?"

"You are right, sweetheart," said I.  "That is something I had never
thought of before.  You are right; canary color it shall be, and when we
have moved in I 'll buy you a dear little canary bird in a lovely gold
cage, and we 'll hang it in the front window right over the lamp, so that
everybody can see our treasures from the street and envy our happiness!"

"You dear, sweet boy!" cried Alice, and she reached up and pulled my head
down and kissed her dear, sweet boy on his bald spot.  Alice is an angel!

I fear I am wearying you with the prolixity of my narrative.  So let me
pass rapidly over the ten years that succeeded to the yellow-lamp epoch.
Ten hard but sweet years!  Years full of struggle and hopes, touched with
bereavement and sorrow, but precious years, for troubles, like those we
have had, sanctify human lives.  Children came to us, and of these
priceless treasures we lost two.  If I thought Alice would ever see these
lines I should not say to you now that from the two great sorrows of
those years my heart has never been and never shall be weaned.  I would
not have Alice know this, for it would open afresh the wounds her dear,
tender mother-heart has suffered.

Galileo and Herschel are strapping fellows.  They have survived their
juvenile ambitions to be milkmen, policemen, lamp-lighters, butchers,
grocerymen, etc., respectively.  Both are now in the manual-training
school.  Fanny, Josephine and Erasmus--I have not mentioned them
before,--these are the children that are left to us of those that have
come in the later years.  And, my! how they are growing!  What changes
have taken place in them and all about us!  My affairs have prospered; if
it had n't been for the depression that set in two years ago I should
have had one thousand dollars in bank by this time.  My salary has
increased steadily year by year; it has now reached a sum that enables me
to hope for speedy relief from those financial worries which encompass
the head of a numerous household.  By the practice of rigid economy in
family expenses I have been able to accumulate a large number of
black-letter books and a fine collection of curios, including some fifty
pieces of mediaeval armor.  We have lived in rented houses all these
years, but at no time has Alice abandoned the hope and the ambition of
having a home of her own.  "Our house" has been the burthen of her song
from one year's end to the other.  I understand that this becomes a
monomania with a woman who lives in a rented house.

And, gracious! what changes has "our house" undergone since first dear
Alice pictured it as a possibility to me!  It has passed through every
character, form, and style of architecture conceivable.  From five rooms
it has grown to fourteen.  The reception parlor, chameleon-like, has
changed color eight times.  There have duly loomed up bewildering visions
of a library, a drawing-room, a butler's pantry, a nursery, a
laundry--oh, it quite takes my breath away to recall and recount the
possibilities which Alice's hopes and fancies conjured up.

But, just two months ago to-day Alice burst in upon me.  I was in my
study over the kitchen figuring upon the probable date of the conjunction
of Venus and Saturn in the year 1963.

"Reuben, dear," cried Alice, "I 've done it!  I 've bought a place!"

"Alice Fothergill Baker," says I, "what _do_ you mean!"

She was all out of breath--so transported with delight was she that she
could hardly speak.  Yet presently she found breath to say: "You know the
old Schmittheimer place--the house that sets back from the street and has
lovely trees in the yard?  You remember how often we 've gone by there
and wished we had a home like it?  Well, I 've bought it!  Do you
understand, Reuben dear?  I 've bought it, and we 've got a home at last!"

"Have you _paid_ for it, darling?" I asked.

"N-n-no, not yet," she answered, "but I 'm going to, and you 're going to
help me, are n't you, Reuben?"

"Alice," says I, going to her and putting my arms about her, "I don't
know what you 've done, but of course I 'll help you--yes, dearest, I 'll
back you to the last breath of my life!"

Then she made me put on my boots and overcoat and hat and go with her to
see her new purchase--"our house!"




II

OURSELVES AND OUR NEIGHBORS

Everybody's house is better made by his neighbors.  This philosophical
utterance occurs in one of those black-letter volumes which I purchased
with the money left me by my Aunt Susan (of blessed memory!).  Even if
Alice and I had not fully made up our minds, after nineteen years of
planning and figuring, what kind of a house we wanted, we could have
referred the important matter to our neighbors in the confident
assurance that these amiable folk were much more intimately acquainted
with our needs and our desires than we ourselves were.  The utter
disinterestedness of a neighbor qualifies him to judge dispassionately
of your requirements.  When he tells you that you ought to do so and so
or ought to have such and such a thing, his counsel should be heeded,
because the probabilities are that he has made a careful study of you
and he has unselfishly arrived at conclusions which intelligently
contemplate your welfare.  In planning for oneself one is too likely to
be directed by narrow prejudices and selfish considerations.

Alice and I have always thought much of our neighbors.  I suspect that
my neighbors are my most salient weaknesses.  I confess that I enjoy
nothing else more than an informal call upon the Baylors, the Tiltmans,
the Rushes, the Denslows and the other good people who constitute the
best element in society in that part of the city where Alice and I and
our interesting family have been living in rented quarters for the last
six years.  This informality of which I am so fond has often grieved
and offended Alice.  It is that gentle lady's opinion that a man at my
time of life should have too much dignity to make a practice of
"bolting into people's houses" (I quote her words exactly) when I know
as well as I know anything that they are at dinner, and that a dessert
in the shape of a rhubarb pie or a Strawberry shortcake is about to be
served.

There was a time when Alice overlooked this idiosyncrasy upon my part;
that was before I achieved what Alice terms a national reputation by my
discovery of a satellite to the star Gamma in the tail of the
constellation Leo.  Alice does not stop to consider that our neighbors
have never read the royal octavo volume I wrote upon the subject of
that discovery; Alice herself has never read that book.  Alice simply
knows that I wrote that book and paid a printer one thousand one
hundred dollars to print it; this is sufficient to give me a high and
broad status in her opinion, bless her loyal little heart!

But what do our neighbors know or care about that book?  What, for that
matter, do they know or care about the constellation Leo, to say
nothing of its tail and the satellites to the stellar component parts
thereof?  I thank God that my hospitable neighbor, Mrs. Baylor, has
never suffered a passion for astronomical research to lead her into a
neglect of the noble art of compounding rhubarb pies, and I am equally
grateful that no similar passion has stood in the way of good Mrs.
Rush's enthusiastic and artistic construction of the most delicious
shortcake ever put into the human mouth.

The Denslows, the Baylors, the Rushes, the Tiltmans and the rest have
taken a great interest in us, and they have shared the enthusiasm (I
had almost said rapture) with which Alice and I discoursed of "the
house" which we were going to have "sometime."  They did not, however,
agree with us, nor did they agree with one another, as to the kind of
house this particular house of ours ought to be.  Each one had a house
for sale, and each one insisted that his or her house was particularly
suited to our requirements.  The merits of each of these houses were
eloquently paraded by the owners thereof, and the demerits were as
eloquently pointed out by others who had houses of their own to sell
"on easy terms and at long time."

It was not long, as you can well suppose, before Alice and I were
intimately acquainted with all the weak points in our neighbors'
residences.  We knew all about the Baylors' leaky roof, the Denslows'
cracked plastering, the Tiltmans' back stairway, the Rushes' exposed
water pipes, the Bollingers' defective chimney, the Dobells' rickety
foundation, and a thousand other scandalous details which had been
dinged into us and which we treasured up to serve as a warning to us
when we came to have a house--"_the_ house" which we had talked about
so many years.

I can readily understand that there were those who regarded our talk
and our planning simply as so much effervescence.  We had harped upon
the same old string so long--or at least Alice had--that, not
unfrequently, even we smilingly asked ourselves whether it were likely
that our day-dreaming would ever be realized.  I dimly recall that upon
several occasions I went so far as to indulge in amiable sarcasms upon
Alice's exuberant mania.  I do not remember just what these witticisms
were, but I daresay they were bright enough, for I never yet have
indulged in repartee without having bestowed much preliminary study and
thought upon it.

I have mentioned our youngest son, Erasmus; he was born to us while we
were members of Plymouth Church, and we gave him that name in
consideration of the wishes of our beloved pastor, who was deeply
learned in and a profound admirer of the philosophical works of Erasmus
the original.  Both Alice and I hoped that our son would incline to
follow in the footsteps of the mighty genius whose name he bore.  But
from his very infancy he developed traits widely different from those
of the stern philosopher whom we had set up before him as the paragon
of human excellence.  I have always suspected that little Erasmus
inherited his frivolous disposition from his uncle (his mother's
brother), Lemuel Fothergill, who at the early age of nineteen ran away
from the farm in Maine to travel with a thrashing machine, and who
subsequently achieved somewhat of a local reputation as a singer of
comic songs in the Barnabee Concert Troupe on the Connecticut river
circuit.

Erasmus' sense of humor is hampered by no sentiment of reverence.  For
the last five years he has caused his mother and me much humiliation by
his ribald treatment of the subject that is nearest and dearest to our
hearts.  In fact, we have come to be ashamed of speaking of "the house"
in Erasmus' hearing, for that would give the child a chance to indulge
in humor at the expense of a matter which he seems to regard as
visionary as the merest fairy tale.  Now Galileo and Herschel are very
different boys; they are making famous progress at the manual training
school.  Galileo has already invented a churn of exceptional merit, and
Herschel is so deft at carpentering that I have determined to let him
build the observatory which I am going to have on the roof of the new
house one of these days.  Galileo and Herschel are unusually proper,
steady boys.  And our daughters--ah! that reminds me.

Fanny is our oldest girl.  She is going on fifteen now.  She favors the
Bakers in appearance, but her character is more like her mother's side
of the family.  If I do say it myself, Fanny is a beautiful girl.  If I
could have _my_ way Fanny would be less given to the social amenities
of life, but the truth is that the dear creature naturally loves gayety
and is bound to have it at all times and under all conditions.  Her
merry disposition makes her a favorite with all, and particularly with
her schoolmates.

Now that I think of it, Willie Sears has been to see Fanny every
evening for the last week.  I wonder whether Alice has noticed it; I
think I shall have to speak to her about it.  Yet the probability is
that Alice will resent the suggestion which my mention of the matter
will convey.  Alice has been saying all along that one particular
reason why our new house should be a large one is that there would then
be a room where Fanny could receive her company without being mortified
almost to death by Erasmus' horrid intrusion and still more horrid
remarks.  At such times I forgive and adore Erasmus.  It seems only
yesterday that I bought her a bisque doll at the World's Fair, a bisque
doll with pink eyes and blue hair, and now--oh, Fanny, are you no
longer our little girl?

Still, we have Josephine, and I am sure she will honor us; for she was
born six years ago under the conjunction of Jupiter and Venus, and
while Mars was at perihelion.  Moreover, she is the seventh daughter of
a seventh daughter, and there are those who believe that there is
especial virtue in that.  I named her after the French empress, not
because I am a particular admirer of that remarkable but unfortunate
woman's character, but for the reason that upon one occasion she
secured a pension of eight hundred francs for the astronomer LeBanc,
who had already added to the sum of human happiness by locating an
asteroid near the left limb of the sun, and who subsequently discovered
a greenish yellow spot on the outer ring of the planet Saturn.  I never
hear my dear little girl's voice or see her sweet face that I do not
think of the planet Saturn; and never in the solemn stillness of night
do I contemplate the scintillating glories of the ringed orb without
being reminded of the fair, innocent babe asleep in her little white
iron bedstead downstairs.

This sentimental association of objects widely separated in space has
served to convince me that there is nothing, either in the heavens
above or in the earth beneath, that has not its use, both profitable
and pleasant.




III

WE MAKE OUR BARGAIN KNOWN

The Schmittheimer place has occasioned Alice and me many heartburnings
of envy the last three years.  I recall that the first time we passed
it Alice exclaimed: "There, Reuben, is just the place for us!"  I
agreed entirely with this proposition.  The house stood back a goodly
distance from the street upon a prominence that gave it an extended
survey of the landscape, and afforded an exceptionally noble
opportunity for an unobstructed view of the heavens upon cloudless
nights.  Alice particularly admired the lawn, for already she pictured
to herself the pleasing sight of little Josephine and little Erasmus at
play in the cool grass under the umbrageous trees.

And now, having yearned and pined for this particular abiding-place a
many days, it was really ours!  Alice told me about it--how she had
comprehended the bargain (for it was indeed a bargain!)--as we
proceeded together to inspect our new home.  It seems that that very
morning, worn out with waiting and inflamed by a determination to do
Now or to perish in the attempt, Alice had sallied forth in quest of
the precious game.  She had gone directly to the owner, had subtly
ingratiated herself in the confidence of Mrs. Schmittheimer, and, in
less than fifteen minutes' time, had made terms with that amiable
woman.  And _such_ terms!  My head fairly swims when I think of it.

Mrs. Schmittheimer is a widow.  Since her husband's demise two years
ago come next September, she has lived in comparative solitude in the
old home.  She was not wholly alone, for with characteristic Teutonic
thrift she had rented the lower part of the house to a small family,
consisting of a mechanic, his wife, their baby, and a small dog.  Mrs.
Schmittheimer herself lived and moved and had her being in the second
story, doing her own cooking and other housework, her only companion
being her faithful omnipresent cat, the sex of which (I state this for
a reason which will hereinafter transpire) was feminine.  Although the
good Mrs. Schmittheimer was not unfrequently visited by female
compatriots who condoled with her and drank her coffee and ate her
kuchen, after the fashion of sympathetic, suffering womanhood, she
wearied of this loneliness; she was, in fact, as anxious to get away
from the old place as Alice and I were to get into it.

So Alice and Mrs. Schmittheimer had little trouble in coming to an
understanding mutually agreeable.  The late Mr. Schmittheimer had
always demanded the round sum of ten thousand dollars for the property
under discussion, but the prevalence of hard times and the persuasive
eloquence of my dear diplomatic Alice induced the late Mr.
Schmittheimer's relict to consent to a reduction of the price to nine
thousand five hundred dollars, "one thousand dollars in cash and the
balance in five years at six per cent. interest, payable semi-annually."

"You see," said Alice to me, "that we practically get the place for
five years by simply paying rent.  We pay one thousand dollars down and
fifty dollars a month interest.  In five years there are sixty months.
and in that time we shall have paid for this place four thousand
dollars, which is but four hundred dollars more than we should have to
pay if we remained in the house we are now living in at sixty dollars a
month rental!  You see, I have figured it all out, and figures can't
lie!"

You will agree with me when I tell you right here that my wife Alice is
a superior woman.

"Now we must be very careful," said Alice, "not to breathe a word about
this to anybody until all the papers have been signed and the property
has been transferred."

I suggested that in so serious a proceeding it might be wise to have
the counsel of the more intimate of our neighbors; the Baylors, the
Rushes and the Tiltmans had had experience in such matters, and might
be of important service to us in this particular undertaking.

"No," said Alice, "we must guard against every possibility of failure.
Our plan might leak out and reach the ears of the real-estate dealers,
and then we should be hopelessly lost.  Our neighbors mean well, but
they are human.  No, the only people I shall consult are the Denslows."

I saw at once the wisdom of this determination.  The Denslows are most
estimable folk and I admire and love them.  Mrs. Denslow is of an
exceptionally warm, generous, and liberal nature, while, upon the other
hand, Mr. Denslow has the reputation of being the most cautious
business man in our city; the consequence is that in the administration
of affairs in the Denslow household you meet with that conservative
happy medium which is beautiful to contemplate.  Alice was right; our
precious secret would be secure with the Denslows.  In fact the
Denslows would be of distinct help to us in the vast enterprise in
which we had embarked.  Mrs. Denslow would be prepared at all times to
provide sympathy and enthusiasm, and Mr. Denslow would be constituted
at once absolute engineer and watchdog of the business details of the
affair.

But--I make the confession amid blushes--I cannot prevaricate, neither
can I dissemble.  Alice knew the guilelessness and singleness of my
nature, and she should not have imposed that dreadful oath of secrecy
upon me.  I would not for all the wealth of the Indies live over again
the awful four hours which followed my solemn promise to Alice not to
reveal the blissful tidings that we had bought the old Schmittheimer
place!  I felt as if I had committed a crime; I was as a haunted man
must be.  I dared not look my neighbors in the face lest they should
read the sweet truth in my honest eyes.

Finally I broke completely down, for I could not stand it any longer.
I actually believe that if I had kept silent another hour the dreadful
consciousness of guilt would have swelled within me to such a bulk as
to have burst me into fragments, which would now be travelling around
aimlessly in space, like the lost Pleiad, or like the dismembered and
stray tail of a comet.  So I called my next neighbor, Rush, out behind
his barn, and, under oath of secrecy, revealed the good news to him,
and then I did likewise by neighbor Tiltman, and so on, in seemly
progression, by all the other neighbors, until at last my confidence
had been securely reposed in every one.

I cannot tell you what sweet relief I found in this proceeding.  To my
killing consciousness of guilt succeeded a peace which passeth all
human understanding.  There was a world of satisfaction, too, in being
assured by each of those dear neighbors that we (Alice and I) had got
the greatest bargain ever heard of, that we were the luckiest couple on
earth, that the old Schmittheimer place was just exactly what we
wanted, that the property would enhance double in value in less than a
year, etc., etc., etc.  Oh, it is good to have such neighbors as ours
are!

The Denslows were quite as glad as the others were to hear of our
bargain.  Mrs. Denslow (bless her kind heart) began at once to picture
the veritable paradise into which it were possible to transform the
front lawn.  In the exuberance of her fancy she portrayed winding
gravel walks among rose bushes and beds of gay flowers; rustic bowers
over which honeysuckle and ivy clambered; picturesque miniature Swiss
cottages in the trees for birds to nest in; an artificial lake well
stocked with goldfishes, and upon whose tranquil bosom a swan or two
would glide majestically through the mist of the fountain that
perennially would shower down its tinkling grace.

It was very pleasing to hear Mrs. Denslow and Alice talk about these
things with that enthusiasm peculiar to their sex.  Until "our house"
became a probability I did not really know with what rapidity it were
possible for women-folk to discuss and to decide even the most
insignificant details of the subject matter of their enthusiasm.  As I
recall, in less than fifteen minutes' time after Alice had confided our
secret to Mrs. Denslow those two amiable and superior women had it
definitely settled what the color of the window shades was to be and
just how many brass-headed tacks would be required to fasten down the
new Japanese rug with which it was proposed to adorn the hardwood floor
of the library in the first story of "the addition" which had already
been determined upon.  But Mrs. Denslow was no more prolific of lovely
suggestions than was Alice's widowed sister Adah, who has made her home
with us for the last two years.  Adah's one o'ermastering ambition in
life has been to build a house.  In the autumn of 1881 she saw in a
copy of "The National Architect" the picture and plans of a villa owned
by a plutocrat at Narragansett Pier.  She preserved this paper as
sacredly as if it were one of the family archives, and upon the
slightest pretext she brought it forth and exhibited it and dilated in
extenso upon the surpassing advantages and beauties of the plutocratic
villa.

When Adah learned that Alice and I had actually bought a place at last
she fairly wept for joy, and she excitedly produced her creased and
worn copy of "The National Architect" and besought us to remodel the
old Schmittheimer "rookery"--that is what she dared to call it--into a
villa!  And when she was made to understand by means of numerous long
and earnest representations that a villa could not even be dreamed of
by poor folk, Adah was prepared to compromise the affair upon a basis
involving our promise to build a colonial house like Maria's house in
St. Jo.

This Maria, whose name is forever upon Adah's tongue, had been Adah's
schoolmate back in St. Joseph, Missouri.  Their friendship extended
through the blissful years of their early wedded life.  And at the
present time they are as dear to each other as of yore.  Adah
presupposes that everybody else knows who Maria is, and so everybody is
regaled perennially with Adah's loyal tributes to Maria's transcendent
virtues.  Occasionally Alice (who is without doubt the sweetest-natured
creature in all the world) rebels against the example of Maria which
Adah continually holds forth.

I have an instance just at hand.  It could not have been more than half
an hour ago that I heard Adah say: "Alice, do you know I 've been
thinking about it all the morning, and I don't see how you 're going to
get along without a closet in that little east room up-stairs."

"But," said Alice, "there seems to be no way of putting a closet into
that room."

"Well, I think I 've hit on a plan," said Adah, and she produced a Mme.
Demorest pattern of a sleeve, upon which, with infinite pains, she had
traced certain lines with the wreck of a pencil which little Josephine
had tried to sharpen with the scissors.

"Yes, I see," said Alice, amiably; "but that would cut in upon the
hall."

"Well, Maria had to do the same thing when she made her house over,"
said Adah, "and you 've no idea how nice it is."

"I don't care _what_ Maria did," said Alice, bridling up.  "This is
_my_ house, and I 'm not going to spoil a good hall by building any
skimpy little closets!  That room will do for Erasmus, and he does n't
need any closet.  So that is settled, once and forever!"

I heard all this, myself, from the next room.  I did not interfere at
all, for I make it a rule never to interpose in other people's
disagreements.  I will admit, however, that it rather wounded me to
hear Alice call it "_my_ house" instead of _our_ house.




IV

THE FIRST PAYMENT

As for Mr. Denslow, he agreed with other friends and neighbors that in
our new old house we had secured a genuine bargain.  But, as I have
already indicated, Mr. Denslow was no day-dreamer; he had a way of
viewing things that was severe in its practicality.

Now, I am in no sense a business man; you may already have suspected
this truth.  I am very far from being a fool, as those who have read my
numerous treatises (particularly my "Essay to Prove the Probability of
the Existence of an Atmosphere on the Other Side of the Moon") will
testify; but, having had little to do with the operations and methods
of trade and commerce, I am not (I admit it freely) an expert in what
in this great, bustling city of Chicago are termed affairs of the world.

Mr. Denslow, upon the other hand, is keenly in touch with these
affairs; brought hourly during the day into contact and competition
with scheming--and not always scrupulous--men, he has acquired an
extensive knowledge of human nature of the rapacious type, and this
knowledge has made him wary, alert, prudent, and reserved.  It is
perhaps this wide difference in our natures and our pursuits that has
attracted Mr. Denslow and me to each other; at any rate our friendship
has been profitable to both.  Mr. Denslow's counsel upon several
important occasions has been of vast value to me, and I flatter myself
that upon one occasion at least I served Mr. Denslow to excellent
purpose.  This was two years ago, when, as perhaps you remember, my
sun-spot theory was widely discussed by the newspaper press.  I then
told Mr. Denslow that the recurrence of the sun spots would surely
induce a drought upon this planet, thereby causing a shortage in the
crops; whereupon Mr. Denslow "cornered the wheat market" (as the saying
is) and realized a handsome sum of money.

Alice has long recognized Mr. Denslow's merits as a man of business;
she, too, has what, in lieu of a better term, our New England people
call faculty.  So it was natural that after having drunk deep (so to
speak) at the fountain of Mrs. Denslow's enthusiasm, we should turn for
serious advice and practical counsel to _Mr._ Denslow.

"This opportunity," said Mr. Denslow, "is one that comes only once in a
lifetime.  You must not let it escape you.  We should go at once to
Mrs. Schmittheimer and get her to sign an agreement to part with the
property upon the terms specified.  In order to bind the agreement we
should pay her a small sum of money--oh, say one hundred dollars.  The
receipt, in the form of an agreement or contract signed by her, will
bind the bargain in the contemplation of the law."

"But it is after dark already," said Alice.  "Wouldn't it seem rather
burglarious to make a descent upon the old lady at this hour?"

"And what is more to the point," said I, "the detail (trifling as it
may appear) of planking down one hundred dollars is one which I happen
just at this moment to be unprepared to provide for."

"The matter should be closed at once," said Mr. Denslow.  "In a deal of
this kind delay is too often disastrous.  As for the one hundred
dollars, I will lend you that amount, for a small cash payment is
really necessary to bind the bargain."

My heart went out in gratitude to this noble gentleman.  Never before
had I felt more keenly the value of neighborly friendship.

"As this business is to be transacted in Mrs. Baker's name," said Mr.
Denslow to me, "it would be better for you not to go with us to see
Mrs. Schmittheimer.  The presence of too many strangers might make the
old lady shy of doing what we want her to do.  See?"

Yes, I comprehended the intent of the suggestion, and I approved it.
While it was far from my desire to take any advantage of the Widow
Schmittheimer or of anybody else, I recognized the propriety of
conserving our own interests to the extent of suffering no rights of
our own to be either lost or jeoparded.  So while Mr. Denslow and Alice
went upon their business mission I remained with Mrs. Denslow and her
interesting children and elucidated my theory of the ice-caps of the
planet Mars.  In less than an hour Mr. Denslow and Alice returned and
exhibited with delight a receipt signed by Katherine Elizabeth
Schmittheimer, which receipt, I was glad to see, was practically a
contract to sell the property upon the terms specified in her original
talk with Alice.

"The terms are certainly exceptionally advantageous!" said Mr. Denslow.
"It will take some time--perhaps a week or ten days--to investigate the
title; when this detail is satisfactorily disposed of you can pay down
your one thousand dollars and take possession of the premises."

Pay down one thousand dollars?  Ah, I had quite forgotten about that.
In my enthusiasm over the prospect of a home of our own, and in the
delirium induced by the delightful chatter about the paradise into
which that front lawn and that old rookery (as Adah called it) were to
be transformed, I had suffered all thought of the essential and
inevitable first payment of one thousand dollars to slip quite out of
my mind.  Now this awful consideration, from which there could be no
escape, took complete and exclusive possession of me.  Where in the
wide, wide world was I to get the one thousand dollars?

This was the question I put to Alice on the way home from the Denslows'
that memorable evening.  Alice knew as well as I did that my salary was
sufficient only to cover the current expenses of the family.  She knew
as well as I did that the royalties from my books the last year were as
follows:

  "The Star Gamma in Leo and Its Satellite"  . . . . . $1.60
  "Mars and Its Ice-Caps"  . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   .75
  "Probable Depth of the Bottle-Neck Seas as
      Indicated by the Spectroscope" . . . . . . . . .   .30
  "Logarithms for the Nursery" . . . . . . . . . . . .  1.15
  "Alphabetical Catalogue of Binary Stars" . . . . . .   .65
                                                       -----
    Total                                              $4.45


Alice knew, too, as well as I did, that the whole amount of money I
received from my lectures before the West Side Society for the
Diffusion of Knowledge did not exceed seventy dollars last year.  She
knew all these things, and I told her so, and then I asked her where or
how she fancied we were going to raise the one thousand dollars for the
first payment on "our house."  To my surprise, Alice was prepared--or
at least she seemed to be prepared for this question.

"Reuben," said she, "I remember having heard Mr. Black say one day
during his visit to us last summer that we ought to have a home, and
that if we ever decided to buy one he would try his best to help us."

Now that Alice spoke of it I, too, recalled that friendly remark of Mr.
Black's.  A man who is drowning will catch at a straw.  A man who has
bought a house with nothing to pay for it is also predisposed to
clutch.  Our old friend Mr. Black now loomed up as my only sure
salvation.

Mr. Black is upward of seventy years of age.  He and my father went to
school together in Maine, and subsequently they lived near each other
in Cincinnati.  Mr. Black had been a merchant; he had retired from
business rich.  After my father's death, while I was still a boy, this
kind old friend was good to me, taking an interest in my work and my
welfare.  He had no children of his own, and, if he did not regard me
almost as a son, I certainly grew to regard him almost as a father.
Mr. Black knew the value of money and respected it.  He gave freely,
but only where he was assured it was deserved and would do actual good.
A prudent, careful, economical man himself, he encouraged prudence and
thrift in others.  He never quite condoned what he regarded as
extravagance upon my part in buying my fifty pieces of mediaeval armor,
although it is to his munificence that I am indebted for the six-foot
telescope with which I am wont to scan the face of the heavens.

The upshot of talks with Alice and Adah and the Denslows--to say
nothing of other neighbors with whom I confidentially consulted--the
upshot of these talks was that I determined to go to Cincinnati to
confer with Mr. Black upon the propriety of his advancing to me the
money wherewith Alice should make the first payment upon her--I mean
our house.  To make short of a long story (for if there is one thing
that I despise above all others it is prolixity), I went to Cincinnati
and unfolded my business to my aged friend.  Mr. Black appeared to be
in no indecent haste to satiate my craving.  He is not, and never was,
a man of exuberant enthusiasms.  I was rather pained when, upon
learning of the unparalleled bargain we had secured in the
Schmittheimer place, he did not go into raptures as did Mrs. Denslow,
and Mrs. Baylor, and Mrs. Tiltman and the rest of our neighbors at
home.  So far from being carried away by any whirlwind of enthusiasm,
Mr. Black maintained a placidity of demeanor amounting to stoicism; he
plied me with questions about "titles," and "abstracts," and
"indentures," and "mortgages," and "liens," and "incumbrances," and
other things that I actually knew no more about than the veriest
Bushman knows about the theory of Nebulae.

To add to my embarrassment he solicited explicit information about the
Schmittheimer place, in what subdivision it was located, and in what
township.  Had I been a veritable human encyclopaedia I could hardly
have satisfied that man's greed for information touching that
particular spot.  What knew I of tracts, of townships, of quarter
sections or of subdivisions?  Were I filled with a knowledge of these
humdrum commonplaces, should I know aught of that enthusiasm which
thrills the being who, after many and long years of weary hoping and
waiting, sees the object of his desires just within his grasp?  Should
Moses just in sight of the promised land be expected to give the
dimensions of that delectable spot, and to locate it and bound it and
map it off with the accuracy of a Rand & McNally township guide?

I suppose that this conservatism is natural with some people--this lack
of fervor, this absence of enthusiasm.  Still I will admit Mr. Black's
tranquillity--nay, his glacial composure--under the circumstances
surprised and grieved me.  I did not understand why the prospect and
the promise of "our house" did not set Mr. Black--and, for that matter,
all the rest of humanity--into the selfsame transports of delight which
I experienced.  Mind you, now, I am not complaining of nor am I finding
fault with Mr. Black.  I am simply chronicling happenings and
observations.  Mr. Black is a benevolent and beneficent man.  He said
to me at last: "Well, you can tell Alice that I will send her a draft
for the money she needs, and within a fortnight I shall run up to take
a look at your purchase."

I was in Cincinnati three days.  I should have been there but two.  A
curious happening detained me.  As I was going to the railway station
from Mr. Black's house the evening of the second day I saw a man with a
reflector telescope selling views of the moon at five cents apiece.
The night was so auspicious for this diversion that I could not resist
the temptation.  Thus seduced, the time sped so quickly and the
intoxication of the enjoyment was so complete that two hours slipped
away before I awakened to a realization of my folly, which cost me
somewhat over a dollar and a half, and compelled me to postpone my
departure for home to the next day.




V

WE NEGOTIATE A MORTGAGE

Alice and I supposed that as soon as we made that first payment upon
the old Schmittheimer place we should take possession of it.  We had
hastened negotiations because naturally enough we were anxious to share
the delights of the Eden which was to be ours.  It transpired all too
early in the proceedings, however, that the processes of the law are
exceedingly exacting and provokingly tedious.  With the one thousand
dollars which Mr. Black gave us we fancied that we should be able to
say to the widow Schmittheimer: "Here is your money; now let us move
in."

It seems that the business is not done in that business-like way.  As
soon as the widow Schmittheimer contracted to part with her property at
a stated price and upon stated terms she awoke to a realization of the
fact that she ought to have the coöperation and counsel of a
lawyer--although for the life of me I cannot see what there was left
for a lawyer to do.  With a magnanimity and generosity which bespoke
the largeness of his nature, Mr. Denslow volunteered his services as
counsellor to the wary widow, and I confess that I should have
interposed no objection to having this versatile friend serve in this
capacity.  But the widow chose to decline the gratuitous services of
Mr. Denslow, and to pay fifty dollars for the professional advice of a
certain Lawyer Meisterbaum, not a bad fellow, but one of those carping,
superficial people who pretend to a conscientiousness and a prudence
and a zeal which they actually do not possess.

After repeated meetings and the most annoying delays, Alice plainly
told this Lawyer Meisterbaum that he had more than earned his fee by
his puerile interferences with a prompt and amicable adjustment of the
affair.  Alice and Mr. Denslow and I agreed that, if we had been left
to ourselves, we could have settled the business with the widow
Schmittheimer in half a day.  However, I suppose that the lawyers must
have a chance to make a living, and I can readily understand how a
really conscientious lawyer might have the lingering remnant or
suggestion of a desire to impress his client with the suspicion that he
was earning his fee.

For fully a fortnight after my return from Cincinnati we were harassed
by the delays of the law, or, more exactly speaking, by the
exasperating crochets of the lawyer.  Meanwhile there came letters of
anxious inquiry from our munificent friend Mr. Black, for that
estimable person, being aware of my predilection for ancient armor and
other curios, found it difficult to disabuse his mind of the suspicion
that his one thousand dollars might have been diverted from its
original purpose, and misappropriated to what he esteemed the uses of
folly.  So it was with a feeling of great relief that finally I
apprised our generous friend by telegraph that the transaction had been
closed.

This end had not been reached, however, until Alice had put her
signature and her seal to a curiously-phrased document which served (as
I was told) as security to the widow Schmittheimer in case of "default
in payment of interest or principal."  This instrument is called, as I
remember, a deed of trust, which seems to be another and a more polite
name for a mortgage.

I protested against Alice's putting her signature to this document,
which I still recognize as a covert foe to our happiness and
prosperity.  But Mr. Denslow assured us that the proceeding was wholly
proper and businesslike, and Alice paid no heed to my expostulations.
Never before had I had any experience in matters or with instruments of
this kind, and I will admit that I have not even now any idea of what
the purport of the document in question is, further than a distinct
intuition that its involved syntax and complex and cloudy phraseology
bode no good.

As soon as the transaction was closed the widow Schmittheimer burst
into tears and loudly bewailed having parted with her home.  I then
learned that for the last ten days she had been almost constantly
besieged by old friends of hers--the same who had been wont to consume
her coffee and her kuchen and who now regaled her (in compensation, as
it were, for her past hospitality) with reproachful assurances that she
had been virtually swindled out of her beautiful property.  The grief
of this lonely and amiable woman touched me to the core, and I sought
to assuage her melancholy by telling her that we should expect her to
visit us, to which she replied amid tears and seeming gratitude that
she would be sure to call every September and March, these being the
months (as I afterward learned) in which the semi-annual interest, so
called, fell due.

As you may suppose, while Alice and I, under the direction of Mr.
Denslow, were worrying ourselves nearly to death over the miserable
details of "closing" this transaction, our neighbors and Adah (Alice's
sister) busied themselves with planning improvements in and for our new
home.  It was during this period that Adah met with one of those
sorrows which benumb the sensitive feminine heart.  In a moment of
vandalism ever to be deprecated, little Erasmus discovered and took
possession of that copy of "The National Architect" which contained the
picture of the plutocratic villa at Narragansett Pier.  This precious
relic was put by the heedless boy to the base use of serving as a tail
to a kite, and during one of the high winds the kite blew away, and
there was an end to Adah's most precious possession!  Thus perished the
link that united Adah to the sweetest dream of her maturer years.

However, this mishap did not wholly abate Adah's interest in our
affairs.  In answer to Adah's solicitation a long letter had come from
Maria, bearing the blissful promise that a carefully made plan of
Maria's house of St. Joe (drawn by Maria herself upon a fly leaf
excerpted from Maria's favorite volume, "The Life of Mary Lyon") would
soon be forwarded for our enlightenment and delectation.  Maria felt
kindly toward us, and her sympathies had been awakened to their very
depths by a tender souvenir Adah had sent her--a leaf plucked from one
of the lilac bushes on the old Schmittheimer place.  Both Adah and
Maria belong to that old-school class of proper feminine folk who never
pick but always pluck flowers.

Well, Adah and the neighbors kept as busy as a bee in a bottle planning
changes that they deemed necessary in our house.  When we got through
with that dilly-dallying, shilly-shallying Lawyer Meisterbaum, Alice
and I found out that Adah and the neighbors had left little for us to
do except to approve their plans and pay for the execution thereof.

There had been a kind of tacit understanding all along that such
changes as we made in the Schmittheimer house should be superintended
by an architect-carpenter who was cordially recommended by Mrs.
Denslow.  This important person's name was Silas Plum, and he had a
shop in Osgood Avenue, opposite one of our most fashionable and most
prosperous cemeteries.  Mrs. Denslow always called him Uncle Si, and
this circumstance rather prejudiced me in favor of him.  The facts,
too, that Uncle Si was not overcrowded with business, that he was
considerate in his charges, and that he was of so great versatility
that he could boss the plumbing as well as the carpentering--these
facts confirmed us in the opinion that Uncle Si was just the man for
our needs.

I went with Mrs. Denslow to call upon this gifted and honest son of
toil.  His modest place of business was indicated to the passer-by by
this insinuating sign:

  SILAS PLUM, CARPENTER & BUILDER.
  COFFIN BOXES A SPECIALITY.


I am not a superstitious person.  I think I have already told you so.
Still I have instincts and intuitions; and you, who are not wholly dead
to the subtle influences of the more delicate sentiments, will probably
sympathize with me when I admit that Mr. Plum's sign did not inspire me
with that enthusiasm which is at least comforting to the possessor.
The reference to Mr. Plum's "speciality" was what cast a temporary
gloom over me, but Mrs. Denslow was not one of those who suffer a
detail so insignificant as this to stand in her way; so I was bounced
into Uncle Si's shop and presented to Uncle Si in propria persona.

Uncle Si impressed me as being a very trustworthy man.  He looked not
unlike myself; his gaunt, sinewy frame betokened severe practicability,
and his calm blue eyes and large straight mouth combined to give his
face an unmistakable and convincing expression of candor.  Of speech he
was monosyllabic, and this peculiarity pleased me, for I have always
admired and always cultivated directness and terseness, there being
nothing else more distasteful to me than the prolixity, diffuseness,
pleonasm, amplification, redundance, and copia verborum of some people.
I told Uncle Si all about the new purchase we had made, and I drew upon
a pine board a fairly correct plan of the Schmittheimer house as it now
stood.  I gave him to understand that numerous and important changes
were required, and that I desired to secure from him an estimate as to
the cost of those changes.

"I can't tell how much it will be till I know what you want," said
Uncle Si.

I recognized the justness of this remark, yet at the same time I felt
bitter toward Uncle Si for not knowing without being told.  To tell the
truth, _I_ didn't know.  I had heard Alice and Adah talking in a
general way about "closets" and a "new hall," and "hardwood floors"
and--and--and things of that kind; I remembered having heard some
discussion of a prospective "addition," and--yes--I now recalled that
the front porch would have to be rebuilt.  Hoping to conceal my utter
ignorance, I told Uncle Si that we wanted "lots of changes," but this
would not satisfy the exasperating man; he insisted upon particulars,
upon "specifications," as he termed them.

Of course I was unable to give them; so was Mrs. Denslow.  The only
really distinct idea Mrs. Denslow had of the transformation
contemplated by Alice was one concerning the front lawn, and involving
gravel walks between flower beds and under umbrageous trees; exotics
perennially in bloom; Swiss tree boxes, from which the lark carolled by
day and the nightingale warbled at night; an artificial lake, in which
goldfishes swam and upon whose translucent bosom majestic swans glided
gracefully--I assure you that Mrs. Denslow has the soul of a poet!

But these delightful fancies did not interest Uncle Si, because they
did not concern him or his trade.  So we compromised the matter by
appointing an hour that evening for Uncle Si to call and talk it all
over with Alice.  This was, seemingly, the only way out of the dilemma.
All I knew was what I didn't want, or, rather, what _we_ didn't want.
Our many and long and earnest conversations with the neighbors had
determined numerous important points.  We didn't want a roof like the
Baylors' roof; nor water-pipes like the Rushes'; nor backstairs like
the Tiltmans'; nor plastering like the Denslows'; nor dormer-windows
like the Carters'; nor a kitchen sink like the Plunkers'; nor smoky
chimneys like the Bollingers'; nor a skimpy little conservatory like
the Mayhews'--in fact, there were so many things we _didn't_ want that
it seemed to me that if Uncle Si had been moderately ingenious or had
given his imagination full rein, he might have guessed what we _did_
want, and so have gone ahead without fear of incurring our displeasure.

It was perhaps better, however, that, before undertaking his task,
Uncle Si should require some hint or intimation of what would be
expected of him.  I am the last man in the world to discourage what is
ordinarily regarded and accepted as reasonable precaution against
embarrassment and adversity.




VI

I AM BESOUGHT TO BUY THINGS

Alice had her talk with Uncle Si and issued therefrom with the
conviction that Uncle Si was a paragon of integrity and carpentering
skill.  As for Uncle Si, he must have gathered together a pretty fair
general idea of what Alice wanted, for he promised to return the next
day with plans and details and with an estimate of what the
contemplated improvements would cost.

Meanwhile another complication had arisen.  The people to whom the
widow Schmittheimer had rented the lower part of the house declined to
vacate the premises unless we paid them a bonus of fifteen dollars.
Alice indignantly protested that we had no fifteen dollars to throw
away, and I recognized the truth of this proposition.  Still, a visit
to the recalcitrant tenants convinced me that they were poor folk and
could ill afford to bear the expense of moving.  Another circumstance
that made me feel rather kindly toward these people was that their name
was Mitchell, and, although they made no such claim, it pleased me to
fancy that they were of kin to that distinguished family which has
contributed so largely to the glory of native astronomical research.

Actuated, therefore, by the most honorable impulses, I gave these
people fifteen dollars which I borrowed for that purpose from my most
estimable neighbor, Mrs. Tiltman, upon the understanding that I should
pay it back when I heard from "The Sidereal Torch," to which
publication I had sent a carefully prepared essay on Encke's comet.  In
this wise a matter which might have caused us much delay and vexation
was quickly and amicably disposed of.  I did not tell Alice of what I
had done, for although Alice is (as I have already assured you) the
most amiable of her sex, she cannot brook what she regards as an
imposition, and this inclination to resent seeming overbearance in
others has not unfrequently put us to expense and involved us in
embarrassment.

Another episode which is still fresh in my memory I cannot forbear
relating.  Alice came to me one day not long ago--it was perhaps three
weeks since--and insisted that I should attend to having the correct
name of the avenue in which we were to live put upon the lamp-posts at
the corners of that avenue.  I could not guess what Alice meant until
she informed me that, although the name of that thoroughfare had by
ordinance of the City Council been changed from Mush Street to
Clarendon Avenue, the old name of Mush Street had (by a singular
inadvertence) been suffered to remain upon the lamp-posts along that
highway.

"The idea!" cried Alice, indignantly.  "Do you suppose I would live
upon Mush Street?  Do you suppose I ever would have bought that house
and lot if I had suspected even for a moment that they were not in
Clarendon Avenue?  Mush Street is just horrid--everybody else thinks
so, and I know it!  I won't have it Mush Street; it's Clarendon Avenue,
and I 'm going to have Clarendon Avenue engraved on my cards!  Reuben,
you must see at once that the lamp-posts are changed."

I confess that so far as I myself am concerned it matters not whether
my abiding place be in Mush Street or in Clarendon Avenue so long as I
am comfortably bedded and fed and my family are well provided for.
Names are, at best, arbitrary things.  Moreover, I was well aware (and
you will see for yourself if you consult a map of our city) that that
thoroughfare which has been renamed Clarendon Avenue is actually Mush
Street, or, at any rate, a continuation of Mush Street.  However, I had
a regard for that sense of feminine pride which made Alice revolt
against Mush Street.  I am aware that the conspicuous characteristics
of Mush Street for many miles are goats and fortune-tellers and coal
yards and rumshops and midwiveries; these glaring features are by no
means such as the élite of our society care to affect.  Conceding that
my indifference to these idiosyncrasies should not be suffered to stand
in the way of the natural current of Alice's womanly pride, I promised
to do my best toward effecting what Alice required, and I am now
engaged upon a memorial to the Mayor and the Board of Aldermen praying
that the lamp-posts in Clarendon Avenue be purged of that lettering
which suggests the commonplace antecedents of that thoroughfare.

I find that Alice is not alone in her wretchedness.  It appears that
our friends Lawyer Miles and Mr. Redleigh and their families are at
present engaged in the momentous task of getting the name of the street
in which they live changed from Cemetery Avenue to Sportland Place.
And our other friends two blocks west of us are greatly agitated just
now because the name of their aristocratic thoroughfare has, by a whim
of the municipal authorities, been changed from Alexander Avenue to
Osgood Street.  I have mentioned these facts to Alice, but no sense of
that sympathy which is said to arise from the companionship of misery
seems to reconcile my dear wife to the plebeian association which the
mere mention of Mush Street suggests.

The Sunday morning after we had actually bought the Schmittheimer place
the city newspapers made a record of the event in their "society
column," and added that it was "understood that in their beautiful new
home Prof. and Mrs. Baker would entertain lavishly."  I was inclined to
take exception to this item, which I regarded as a vulgar parade of our
private affairs; moreover, the innuendo was wholly untruthful.  Alice
and I did not intend to "entertain" at all; we could not afford to
"entertain."  What would Mr. Black say if by chance he were to get hold
of a copy of any of those Sunday morning newspapers and read that
mendacious paragraph?  He would not only lament the one thousand
dollars which he had just advanced; worse than that, he would forever
shut down on those other acts of similar generosity which, I am free to
say, Alice and I counted among the pleasing probabilities of the near
future.

I repeat that this untruthful notoriety through the medium of the
"society column" displeased me, and I am sure I should have spoken my
mind very freely about it if I had not heard Alice reading the item
with evident gusto to her sister Adah.  My amazement was increased when
Alice asked me to secure a dozen extra papers for her, as she wished to
send marked copies to certain fashionable society acquaintances and to
several other relatives in Maine!  I can picture the rural astonishment
with which Cousin Jabez Fothergill of Biddeford Pool and the Strattons
of North Moosehead will read of our good fortune.  I more than half
suspect that in a moment of triumphant revenge and in a spirit of cruel
malice Alice sent a copy of the paper to Miss Mears at Pocatapaug.
Miss Mears is little to me now, but once I called her Hepsival, and
even after these many years of separation I would fain undo any act of
spite which her successful rival, Alice, might attempt.

The Monday following the publication of this strangely malevolent item
was an unusually busy day with me.  I seemed suddenly to have become
the target of every man who had anything to sell.  I was waited upon by
fruit-tree venders, lightning-rod agents, fire underwriters, plumbers,
gas-fitters, painters, and an innumerable army of persons having
horses, cows, pigs, chickens, shade trees, patent hitching posts,
smoke-consumers, Pasteur filters, shrubbery, lawn statuary, fancy
poultry, garden utensils, and patent paving to dispose of.  I really
cannot realize how I got rid of them all, for a more affable and
persuasive lot of gentlemen I never before had met with.  Come to think
of it, I have not got rid of them.  They continue to cultivate my
acquaintance and on account of their attentions (polite but persistent)
I have been compelled to lay aside temporarily my investigation into
the character of the atmosphere around Aldebaran, a most delicate work
upon which I am hoping to rear the superstructure of my fame.

I admit that these attentions rather flatter me; it is possible that
after a time--say a year or two--I may weary of the courteous gentleman
who is now seeking to sell me a dozen apple-trees, one-third cash,
balance in ten years.  I may, in the lapse of time, become indifferent
to the blandishments of him who daily for the last two months has been
trying to convince me that I cannot reach the summum bonum of human
happiness until I have invested four dollars in Perkins' patent
automatic garden rake and step-ladder combination.  The gentleman who
has the smoke-consumer, the gentleman who deals in shrubbery, the
gentleman who advocates lightning rods, and the other gentlemen who
represent the tantamount interests of lawn statuary, fancy poultry,
patent paving, etc., etc., etc.--I may, in the flight of years, become
insensible to their charms, for there is no change that is not rendered
possible by the capricious offices of Time.  But at present I can
hardly realize how these people can ever be other than they now
are--near to me, as I know, and dear to me, as I feel.

I did not suspect, before I became a householder, that the mere
possession of property was capable of making a man an object of such
unflagging interest to his fellow creatures.  I find it very
pleasing--the solicitude with which these newly-made acquaintances (the
venders, agents, and other polite gentlemen) regard me, and attend upon
me, and seek to gain my approval.  It is sweet to be beloved.

In the very height of this enjoyment, however, there are considerations
which serve to cause me feelings of disquietude.  My conscience
constantly reproves me for the deception which I am practising upon
these people.  It occurred to me several weeks ago that I had no right
to pose as the proprietor of our new house.  The new house and its
circumadjacent real estate belong not to me, but to Alice and to her
heirs and assigns forever.  I have no proprietary rights in that house
or upon that expansive lawn; If I am there, it is simply as a piece of
furniture, like the stove, or the clock, or the centre-table.  I am
simply tolerated, perhaps as an object of ornament, perhaps as an
object of use.  This is a humiliating confession; the thought that it
is actually true pains me poignantly.

I never supposed I was a moral coward, but I must be; otherwise I would
weeks ago have called an open-air mass-meeting of the apple-tree
agents, the fire-underwriters, the patent pavers and the others, and
confessed to them that their attentions were misdirected, and that I
was not in fact _the_ fortunate being whose lot they sought to better.

A strangely craven consideration withheld me from this manly course.  I
suspected that as soon as I divulged the truth I would be forsaken by
this troupe--this retinue of unctuous courtiers.  In my imaginings I
beheld myself deserted and alone, while the vast army of my quondam
attendants and flatterers tagged after and surrounded and fawned upon
Alice, the real purchaser and actual owner of our new place!

I make a candid exposition of these things, not more for the purpose of
relieving my conscience of its long pent-up misery than for the purpose
of disclosing that which may happily serve as a warning to my
fellow-beings.  I long ago discovered that one of the compensations of
human folly is the example which that folly affords for the discreet
guidance of others.




VII

OUR PLANS FOR IMPROVEMENTS

The result of the numerous conferences between Alice and Uncle Si was
rather surprising to me.  It involved the expenditure of somewhat more
than three thousand dollars.  However, a letter had been received from
our beneficent friend, Mr. Black, in which that estimable gentleman
expressed the conviction that we ought not to try to live in a house
that did not have the ordinary conveniences of a modern city home, and
that we should add whatever improvements we deemed necessary to our
comfort; these pleasing expressions of opinion were supplemented by the
still more pleasing intimation that Mr. Black would advance us whatever
sum was necessary to the provision of the changes and innovations we
deemed expedient.  It was evident that Mr. Black was most kindly
disposed toward us; at the same time our munificent patron took
occasion to caution us against extravagance and to impress upon us a
sense of the necessity of constant and rigorous economy--"especially
and particularly in the direction of those vanities which simply
gratify an individual whim, and are of no practical value whatsoever."

Alice read this last sentence aloud to me several times, for it
expressed exactly her opinion of my fondness for mediaeval armor.  I am
making no complaint of the sly satisfaction which Alice seemingly takes
in twitting me with my weakness.  I expect to have a glorious revenge
by and by when we move into our new house, and when Alice discovers how
very appropriate and ornamental my mediaeval armor will be, set up
against the walls and in the corners of the front hall.

Fortified by the letter from Mr. Black, we had little difficulty in
planning the most charming improvements.  I make use of the plural
personal pronoun, although if I were testifying upon oath I should feel
compelled to admit that I myself had precious little to do with the
planning.  It grieved me considerably to observe that while the
neighbors generally, and Mrs. Denslow particularly, were diligently
consulted as to every detail of the new house, an expression of my
wishes, views, and advice was not only not solicited, but, when
volunteered, seemed to be regarded as an impertinence.  It occurred to
me at such times that prosperity by no means improved Alice's temper,
but I should perhaps have taken into consideration the circumstance
that this particular period was one of exceptional excitement, and that
had the same sense of responsibility which burdened Alice been put upon
me, I, too, should have exhibited an irritability wholly foreign to my
nature under normal conditions and environments.

It was determined to reconstruct certain parts of the old Schmittheimer
residence and to build an addition of two stories, the first-floor room
to be devoted to the purposes of a library or living room, and the room
in the second story to be Alice's bed-chamber.  A vast number of
closets were contemplated, for, as you are presumably aware, woman-kind
are passionately fond of closets, and happy, thrice happy, is the
husband who is accorded the inestimable boon of suspending his Sunday
suit from a nail therein.  As for myself, I have always regarded the
average closet as an ingenious device of the evil one for the
propagation and encouragement of moths.

Among other contemplated innovations were a butler's pantry and a
conservatory.  I approved of the latter, but not of the former.  I
foresaw in that butler's pantry a pretext, if not a reason, for the
purchase of china, crockery, and glassware, to be used only when we had
company and to be hidden away at other times until broken by careless
servants.

A conservatory had for years been one of my most pleasing desires.
Although I know little of them, I am fond of flowers, particularly of
those which others care for and which do not breed or abound in
creeping things.  But the use to which I was ambitious to put my--or
our--conservatory was that of an aviary.  I love all pet birds, and one
of my sweetest day dreams has been that which possessed me of a large
glass room or bower well stocked with canaries, linnets, bullfinches,
robins, wrens, Java sparrows, love birds, and paroquets.  I have often
pictured to myself the delight I should experience in entering into
this heaven of song and in caressing these feathered pets, in feeding
them and in teaching them pretty tricks and games.  I recall those
pleasant boyhood days when a pet crow, and a flock of pigeons, and two
baby hawks afforded me rapture and solicitude combined.  Then followed
an experience with a matronly hen and her brood of chicks.

I am not ashamed to say that I loved these friends of my youth and that
I still reverence their memories.  Nor am I ashamed to tell you that
for several years after I reached maturity a particular object of my
affections was a wee canary bird that sang sweet songs to me and played
daintily with my finger whenever I thrust it into the little rascal's
cage.  Alice insists that I actually cried when that silly little
creature died; may be I did, for I am a very, very foolish fellow.

One of the things I have never been able to understand is why Alice,
with all her gentleness and tenderness, has so violent an antipathy to
bird and brute pets.  Alice actually seems to dislike birds and dogs
with the same zeal with which I love them.  At times--you will hardly
believe it--Alice has exhibited Neronian cruelty and hardness of heart.
I remember that on one occasion she caught a harmless, innocent little
blue mouse in the pantry.  She fully intended to drown the helpless
creature--as if this world were not big enough for mice and men to live
and be happy in!  I had great difficulty in rescuing the tiny rodent
from his captor, and I remember the satisfaction I had in giving him
his liberty under the kitchen porch of neighbor Rush's house next door.

At first Alice was kindly disposed toward the conservatory scheme, but
in an unguarded moment one day I chanced to breathe a suggestion that a
combination conservatory-bird cage would do very nicely, and that
settled the fate of my pleasant dreamings forever.

But I seldom argue these things with Alice.  The conservatory is now a
shattered dream, and the butler's pantry is inevitable.  The graceful
alcove, which was to have been the conservatory (with aviary features),
is to be provided with a permanent, stationary seat which Adah is to
upholster in a pattern which Maria has promised to send from St. Joe.
Whenever I think of it there rise up before my mind's eye visions of
stolen meetings in that alcove, and whispered interviews, in which I
fancy I see our daughter Fanny figuring as an active participant, and
then I devoutly pray that little Erasmus' vigilance may be increased a
thousand-fold.

I was informed in good time that the library was to be virtually the
living-room for the family.  It was here that casual callers were to be
received and entertained; here the errand boys who delivered packages
from the downtown shops were to leave their goods and get their
receipts; here the laundryman was to wait every Monday morning while
Adah gathered up my hebdomadal bundle of linen for the wash; here were
the children to gather for a frolic every evening after the humble
vesper meal.

I am wondering whether Alice and Adah and the neighbors will approve of
my dearly cherished plan to have one of the tall clocks stationed in
one corner, and my very old Suffolk oak table in another corner, and in
still another the curious old sofa which Aunt 'Gusty has promised to
send me from Darien, Georgia.  I am painfully aware that Alice and Adah
and the neighbors regard the beautiful furniture in which I delight as
"old trumpery."

When we first looked at the Schmittheimer place Alice exclaimed, upon
being ushered into one of the rooms: "Now this is just the room for
Reuben and his old trumpery!"  It is twenty-two feet long and eighteen
feet wide, and there are windows to the north, west, and south.
Curiously enough, the chimney runs up through the middle of this room,
presenting an appearance at once novel and grotesque.  Alice assures me
that this will prove a unique and charming feature, for she intends to
put innumerable shelves around the chimney, and place thereon the
interesting and valuable curios, the purchase of which has kept me
involved in financial embarrassment for the last twenty years.

Alice has settled it in her own mind just where in my new room each bit
of my beloved furniture shall be located--the mahogany chest of
drawers, the old secretary, the four-post bedstead, the haircloth
trunk, the oak book-case, the corn-husk rocker, the cuckoo clock, the
Dutch cabinet--yes, each blessed piece has already had its place
assigned to it, even to the old red cricket which Miss Anna Rice sent
me from her Connecticut home twelve years ago.  I am indeed the most
fortunate of men; for who but my Alice _could_ be so sweet and
self-abnegatory as to take upon her own dear little shoulders the
burden of responsibilities that elsewise would weigh upon her husband?




VIII

THE VANDALS BEGIN THEIR WORK

At the regular April meeting of the Lake Shore Society of Antiquarians
I met my old and valued friend, Belville Rock, and told him of the
important venture which Alice had made.  He seemed greatly pleased at
the prospect of our having a home of our own, and after making careful
inquiries into the extent and character of the improvements we
contemplated he bade me tell Alice that he wanted to pay the bill for
the painting of the exterior of the house.  "I desire to do somewhat
toward beautifying your premises," said he, "and I don't know that I
can do better than to paint the house.  You understand, of course, that
my long and intimate acquaintance with you and Alice warrants me in
proposing as a friendly act what elsewise might be regarded as an
impertinence."

I hastened to assure Mr. Rock that both Alice and I knew him to be
utterly incapable of any word or deed that could by any means be
misconstrued into an impertinence.  We had known this amiable gentleman
for the period of twenty years.  It was he who proposed me for
membership of the Lake Shore Society of Antiquarians, and it was he who
provided the means wherewith I published my first book, entitled "A
Critical View of the Causes of Eclamptic and Traumatic Idiocy."

This was at the time in my career when I supposed I had good reason to
believe that all human mental and physical ills are directly traceable
to the influence of the moon, which theory was suggested to me by the
discovery that cabbages thrive when planted in the first quarter of the
moon and invariably pine when planted in the full of the moon.  I am
still more or less of a believer in this theory, and it is my purpose
to renew my investigations and experiments in this direction,
particularly so far as cabbages are involved, for I mean to have a
kitchen garden (with Alice's permission) as soon as we move into our
new place in Mush Street--pardon me, I mean Clarendon Avenue.

Belville Rock has always exhibited a friendly interest in me and my
welfare.  He is president of a savings bank and is concerned in
numerous mercantile and speculative enterprises.  He belongs to many
clubs and social organizations, and is president of the Sons of
Vermont, the Sons of New York, the Sons of Rhode Island, the Sons of
Michigan, and the other Sons who have effected formal organizations in
this city.  He is treasurer of most of the current enterprises and he
is recognized as a leader of distinct influence in the several
political parties which control public affairs locally.

Mr. Rock commands the happy faculty of divorcing himself wholly from
business during those hours which he has dedicated to sociability.  He
declines to discuss monetary matters outside his room at the bank.  I
recall how, upon several occasions when I have approached him upon the
delicate subject of negotiating a trifling temporary loan, he has
dismissed the matter by reminding me that he had certain days which he
set apart for business of this character, and that at other times he
devoted himself exclusively to the consideration of other things.

I recall, too, that after persistent inquiry (having, possibly, selfish
ends in view), I learned from Cashier Bolton, who is Mr. Rock's
marble-hearted alter ego, that Mr. Rock's hours for the consideration
of all applications for personal accommodations were from 7.55 to 8
a.m., every other Thursday.  This may strike the average person as a
unique singularity, but I find it easy to understand how a man so
numerously interested in affairs as Mr. Rock is should find it
imperative to regulate his business and social conduct with the most
methodical and most exacting system.

You can depend upon it that I lost no time in apprising Alice and Adah
and our neighbors of Mr. Rock's munificent proposition, and I hardly
need assure you that by all Mr. Rock's generosity was warmly applauded.
The incident gave rise to a new phase in the sequence of events, for
immediately a discussion arose as to the color which we ought to paint
our new house, and this discussion continued with increasing vigor for
several days.  Adah was characteristically earnest in her advocacy of a
soft cream yellow, that being the shade adopted by Maria when she
repainted her St. Joe domicile--a soft cream yellow, with the blinds in
a delicate brown, that was Adah's choice as inspired by her memory of
Maria's habitation.  The Baylors suggested a poetic grayish tint, which
they insisted would look specially pretty through the foliage of the
fine old trees in the front yard.  The Tiltmans preferred a light
brown, and the Rushes a bright yellow.  As for Mrs. Denslow, she raised
her voice in favor of "white, with green blinds," for, as she wisely
argued, it was not possible to find a more appropriate combination for
a house that had been a farmhouse and that would retain (even after we
had rehabilitated it) the most salient characteristics of a farmhouse.

Alice and I agreed with Mrs. Denslow (as we generally do), and our
determination was confirmed when we subsequently learned, upon inquiry
of Mr. Krome, the painter, that white paint was as expensive a paint as
could be selected.  It was our desire, in our choice of paint, to do
nothing likely to lessen or to detract from the lustre of the
princeliness of Mr. Rock's liberality.  Mr. Rock had set no limitations
to his munificence; far be it from us to do that which might be
construed wrongfully as inappreciation of that munificence.  It was the
part of friendship to premise that Mr. Rock's intentions were large,
and then it behooved us to see that those intentions were carried out
upon a scale of equal scope.  We decided, therefore, that the paint
should be white, and that it should be carriage paint.

Uncle Si had advised us to have plenty of light and air admitted to
"the addition" by means of numerous windows.  According to the rude
plan he submitted for Alice's approval, "the addition" when completed
would have looked like a collection of windows of every size and shape.
This was before Mr. Rock offered to paint the house.  After Mr. Rock's
proposal was made to and accepted by us it occurred to us that it would
result in a considerable saving to us if we were to limit the number of
windows and devote the space (thus economized) to clapboarding.  This
would involve a larger expense upon Mr. Rock's part, but it could not
be denied that Mr. Rock could better afford paying for paint than we
could afford paying for window frames and glass.

I think it likely that I should have called on Mr. Rock to learn his
preference in the matter had the "every other Thursday" been nearer at
hand.  But Mr. Krome, the painter, and Uncle Si, the boss carpenter,
required a speedy decision, and so we went ahead without consulting our
munificent friend.  Mr. Krome thereupon volunteered to do our painting
by the square yard, instead of by the square foot (as is the customary
proceeding); he admitted, with a candor rarely met with in his
profession, he could as well afford to do our house in white carriage
paint by the square yard as other rival painters could afford to do it
in common white lead by the square foot.  I assured Mr. Krome of my
determination to spare no pains to coöperate with him in every honest
and ambitious endeavor at Mr. Rock's expense.

So now, the widow Schmittheimer having vacated the premises, the work
of rehabilitation began in earnest.  Men with wheelbarrows and spades
and picks made their appearance and started in to demolish walls and to
excavate sand at a marvelous rate.  Presently a cavernous space yawned
where it was proposed to locate the cellar where the steam-heating
apparatus was to stand.  The sand taken from this spot was harrowed out
and dumped in a pile over the horse-radish bed in the back yard.

This was the first piece of vandalism I noticed, and I protested
against it.  Not long thereafter I discovered that the workmen engaged
at battering down the partitions in the upper part of the house were
piling up the refuse scantling and laths on the currant and gooseberry
bushes in the side yard.  I protested again, and so I kept on
protesting, for hardly a day passed that I did not detect the workmen
about that house at some piece of lawlessness jeoparding the cherry
trees, or the lilac bushes, or the tulips, or the roses, or the
peonies, or the asparagus bed.

Cui bono--to what good?  With as much effect might the wild man of
Borneo rail at Capella because her silvery, twinkling light is
seventy-one years in reaching this distant planet.

I am unalterably opposed to the wanton destruction of life.  Moreover,
it seems to me that the trees, the shrubbery, the vines and the flowers
on the Schmittheimer place have certain rights which the invaders ought
to respect.  At any rate, I spent the better part of two days
transplanting a number of the currant and gooseberry bushes, and
although I had a stiff neck and a very lame back for a considerable
time thereafter I felt more than compensated therefor by the conviction
that I had saved the lives of friends who would duly give me practical
proof of their gratitude.

There were certain acts of lawlessness that I could neither prevent nor
repair.  One grieved me particularly.  The plumber hitched his horse to
a tree in the front yard one morning, and, before the damage he had
done was discovered, the herbivorous beast had eaten up a white lilac
bush and a snowball bush, thus completing a destruction for which there
would seem to be no compensation.  Upon another occasion a stray cow
invaded the premises and laid waste the tulip bed and chewed off the
tender buds on the choicest of the rose bushes.

But the most extensive and the most hideous depredations were committed
by human beings under pretext of necessity and of interest in my
behalf.  I refer now to those remorseless men who came first and tore
up the beautiful lawn and cut away the roots of trees and digged a
deep, long pit in which to lay sewer pipes; who came again and
committed another similar atrocity under plea of laying a water-pipe;
who came still again and for the third time abused and seared and
seamed and blighted that lawn for the alleged purpose of laying a
gas-pipe!  O civilization! what crimes are committed in thy name!

These experiences sobered and saddened me to a degree that was
strangely new to me.  At times I felt embittered against all the world.
But as there is no cloud that has not its silver lining, so there were
pleasant little happenings which ever and anon seemed to relieve my
despondency.  On one occasion Uncle Si said to me cheerily: "We 're
going to have good luck from this time on."  "What do you mean?" I
asked.  "Come along with me and see for yourself," said he.

Uncle Si led the way into the house and down into the basement.  He
pointed to an old valise that, spread open, lay under the stairs amid
the débris which the masons had left.

"That 's what I mean," said Uncle Si, "and it brings good luck every
time!"

I saw that the old and abandoned valise contained a tabby cat at whose
generous dugs six wee kittens were tugging industriously.  The widow
Schmittheimer had left her home and gone elsewhere, but faithful tabby
remained behind, true to that instinct which makes the feline
unalterably loyal to locality.

I never before liked cats; I have always positively disliked them
because they kill birds.  Yet, do you know, I actually felt my heart go
out in tenderness to this particular mother tabby and her mewing kits.
It occurred to me, as she lay there, blinking and purring in apparent
amiability and in evident pride, that here at least was a cat that
would not kill birds; if so, I would adopt her, and as for the
kittens--yes, I would adopt them, too.

I made up my mind that I would name the kittens after my most intimate
neighbors; one should be Baylor, another Tiltman, another Rush, a
fourth Denslow, the fifth Browe, and the sixth Roth.  I am sorry there
are not two more, for I should like to honor my two munificent patrons,
Mr. Black and Mr. Rock.  But there must be a limit to human
possibilities.  As for the mother cat herself, there was but one thing
for me to do; I had to name her Alice, of course.




IX

NEIGHBOR MACLEOD'S THISTLE

The incident of the tabby cat's appearance with six kittens may have
been a portent either of good or of evil.  As you know, I am not a
superstitious person.  I smile at those whimsical fancies which figure
so conspicuously in many people's lives, such as the howling of dogs,
the flickering of a candle, the arrangement of the grounds in a cup,
the cracking of a mirror, the sudden stopping of the clock, the crowing
of hens, the chirping of crickets, the hooting of an owl, the fall of a
family portrait, the spilling of salt, a dream of the toothache, etc.,
etc., etc.  If this particular cat had been black instead of tabby I
should have regarded her advent as a prognostic, for it is conceded by
all scientists that there is a mysteriously subtle virtue in a black
cat.

The fact, however, that she was tabby dispossessed her of all power
either for evil or for good, and I could not help regarding Uncle Si
with pity for the seeming veneration in which he held this harmless and
innocent beast.  Still I determined to watch and note events with a
view to confuting the superstition which foresaw good luck in the
presence of this cat and her offspring.

While the work of rehabilitating the old house was at its height I
received a letter from my friend Byron Tinkle of Kansas City,
congratulating me upon having secured so lovely a home after so many
years of patient waiting.  "And now," said he, "I am anxious to be
represented by some bit of furniture in your new place.  It has
occurred to me that a handsome library table might be acceptable, and
it would certainly delight me to present you with an object which would
serve to remind you of your old schoolmate, whose affection for you has
been abated neither by separation nor by the lapse of time."

Mr. Tinkle then went on to say that he had hit upon a very appropriate
design for a library table--a design full of historical and
mythological allusion.  Four figures of Atlas supporting the world were
to serve as the legs of this table, and around the sides of the top
were to be carved scenes illustrative of the progress of civilization
since the building of Solomon's temple.  Upon the four edges of the top
were to be inlaid mosaic portraits of the most famous scientists,
including Aesculapius, Moses, Galileo, Darwin, Herschel, Mitchell,
Huxley, Harvey, Jenner, etc., and the top itself was to represent a
cunningly devised map of the world, in which my native town of
Biddeford, Maine, was to appear as the central and most conspicuous
figure.

I felt very grateful to my old friend Tinkle for his generosity, but I
said nothing of it to Alice.  Recalling the experience with Colonel
Mullaly's yellow lamp, I suspected that if Alice were to hear of this
promised addition to our furniture she would surely change the whole
architectural scheme of our new home in order to adapt it to the new
centre table.

Mr. Tinkle's princely offer was but the beginning of a series of
handsome and useful gifts.  It seemed as if our friends no sooner heard
of our purchase of a home than they became possessed of a desire to
contribute toward embellishing that home.  Another Kansas City friend,
Colonel Gustave Gerton, late of the Bavarian Guards, telegraphed me
that a dozen young apple trees, carefully picked from his Nonpareil
Nursery, awaited my order.  The Janowins, who have a prosperous farm in
Kentucky, duly apprised us that when we were ready to stock our place
they would send us a heifer and a litter of pigs.  Cousin Jabez
Fothergill forwarded to us all the way from Maine a box which was found
to contain a pint of Hubbard squash seeds, a dozen daffodil sprouts,
and a goodly collection of catnip roots.  Offers of dogs came from
numerous quarters--dogs representing the mastiff, bloodhound,
Newfoundland, beagle, setter, pointer, St. Bernard, terrier, bull,
Spitz, dachshund, spaniel, colly, pug, and poodle families.  Had we
contemplated a perennial bench show, instead of a quiet home, we could
hardly have been more favored.  With a discretion begotten of twenty
years' experience as a husband, I referred all these proffers of canine
gifts to Alice with power to act, and I dimly surmise that
consideration of them has been postponed indefinitely.

As soon as our neighbors realized what horticultural possibilities our
noble expanse of front yard offered they fairly overwhelmed us with
floral and arboreal gifts.  During that unusually warm spell we had
about two months ago there was scarcely an hour of the day that a
wheelbarrow or a man servant or both did not arrive bearing lilac
sprouts from the Leets, or Japanese ivy slips from the Sissons, or
peonies from the old Doller homestead, or mignonette from Mrs. Roth, or
dahlias from Mrs. Knox, or marigolds from the Baylors, or pansies from
the Haynes, or tulip bulbs from Mrs. Redd, or something or another from
somebody else.

You can depend upon it that all this kept me wondrously busy.  I broke
four trowels and raised a dozen ugly blisters on my right hand in my
attempt to get these tender tokens of friendship transplanted before
they withered.  One day Mrs. Baylor and Mrs. Rush took me to a
neighboring greenhouse with them; they wanted to purchase some vines to
train over their front porches.  The man at the greenhouse showed me an
innumerable assortment of beautiful rose-bushes, which I bought in the
fond delusion that they would vastly embellish our front lawn.  I
recall the pride with which I told Alice and Adah that I guessed I had
purchased enough flowers to fill the whole yard.  I recall also the
sense of humiliation I experienced when, after that innumerable
assortment had been set out in the yard, I discovered that there was
not enough of them to make an impression even upon the most susceptible
eye.

I am not yet quite sure whether neighbor Macleod was in earnest or
whether he meant it in fun when he sent us a magnificent thistle, with
the suggestion that we plant it in our lawn.  But, out of respect to
neighbor Macleod's patriotism as a loyal son of Caledonia, I did plant
the thistle in amiable compliance with my friend's suggestion.  Other
neighbors protested against this, but I imputed their objections to
that natural feeling of jealousy which is too likely to manifest itself
when the interests of other neighbors are involved.  The thistle was an
uncommonly large and active one, and I suffered somewhat from its teeth
before I finally got it comfortably located in a patch of succulent
turf under one of our willow-trees.

The unusually warm spell to which I have referred was followed (as you
will doubtless recollect), by a period of bitterly cold weather.  With
an anguish which I am utterly incapable of describing, I saw my
marigolds and mignonette and roses and peonies and dahlias and pansies
and other leafy pets wither and droop and shrivel.  In less than
forty-eight hours' time they were all apparently as dead as that side
of the moon which is invisible to us.  The only flower or shrub in all
that once blooming lawn which remained unshorn of its beauty by the
bitter hyperborean blasts was the Macleod thistle.  Proudly it reared
itself amid that desolation, and defiantly it exhibited its fangs to
foe and friend alike.

I cannot tell you how heartily I rejoiced that I had not yielded to the
importunities of the Baylors, the Tiltmans, the Browes, and the
Denslows when, in an ebullition of neighborly jealousy, they sought the
destruction of that sturdy plant.  But my delight was of short
duration.  One morning before I arrived to pursue my horticultural
avocation a remorseless policeman invaded the premises and pulled up
the bristling emblem of Scotia and cast it into the hard highway under
the pretext that by so doing he was complying with a provision of the
revised statutes.  I learned that this policeman is a Swede, and I can
justify his conduct only upon the hypothesis of heredity, although it
is hard to conceive that the malignant feeling which existed centuries
ago among the Norsemen who were wont to harry the Scottish coast should
exhibit itself at this remote period in the demeanor of a naturalized
Swede who presumably does not know the difference between a viking and
a meteorite.

If I had been of a sarcastic or of a bitter nature, I might have
imputed this curious train of mishaps to the malign influence of that
maternal tabby cat which Uncle Si had hailed as a harbinger of good
luck.  As it was, I could not resist giving play to my desire for
retaliation when Uncle Si confided to me one morning that some
unscrupulous person or persons had invaded the premises the night
before and had carried off about six thousand feet of choice lumber.  I
was disposed to be very wroth at first, but when I gathered from Uncle
Si's remarks that the loss would fall upon him and not upon me my anger
was assuaged to a degree that admitted of my suggesting to Uncle Si
that perhaps this incident might be reckoned as a part of that "good
luck" which the advent of the tabby cat and her kits had prognosticated.

Having unbosomed myself of this perhaps too savage thrust, I gave Uncle
Si a cigar and in my most cordial tones bade him "never mind and be of
good cheer."  I make it a practice never to say or do that which is
likely to occasion pain or humiliation without accompanying the word or
the deed with somewhat that shall serve as an antidote thereunto.  For
I bear ill will to none, and it is constantly my endeavor to make life
pleasant and dear not only to myself but also to my fellow beings.

My consideration for Uncle Si's feelings was almost immediately
rewarded, for as I left Uncle Si smoking his cigar in a comforted mood
I beheld my neighbor, Colonel Bobbett Doller, coming up the driveway
and beckoning to me.  If you know the colonel as I do, you know him to
be a gentleman of wealth, of position, and of influence.  Moreover,
Colonel Doller is a man of large sympathies.  He had heard of our
recent acquisition and had come to congratulate me.  We shook hands
warmly.

"You have here," said Colonel Doller, cordially, "a magnificent
property, and I heartily rejoice to learn that you acquired it at a
merely nominal price.  Has it occurred to you, my dear sir, that this
tract, with its majestic sweep of lawn and its picturesque glory of
shade trees, presents tremendous possibilities--in fact, secures to you
the opportunity of comprehending riches beyond the dreams of avarice?
Let us be seated upon this pile of bricks while I unfold to you a
panorama of potentialities."




X

COLONEL DOLLER'S GREAT IDEA

Colonel Bobbett Doller and I sat down, side by side, on the pile of
bricks, and the colonel proceeded straightway to disclose pleasing
visions to my mind's eye.

"You are doubtless aware," said the colonel, "that you are not, in the
severest acceptation of the term, a business man?"

"Alas," said I, "I am compelled in all candor to admit that lamentable
fact."

"Then," continued the colonel, "you probably do not know that this
noble expanse of high ground upon which your stately residence is
reared is the exact centre of a radius of eighty miles.  In other
words, did the power of your vision extend eighty miles you would be
able to see for yourself from the roof of your superb house that this
point is in fact the centre of a radius representing a stretch in any
and every direction of eighty miles."

"No, I had never supposed it possible," said I.

"It is, nevertheless, a demonstrable fact," said Colonel Doller.  "It
is more notorious, however, that this property of yours (designated in
the records as the south half of lot 16, Terhune's addition, section 9,
township of Pond View)"----

"Page 273, volume 105," said I, interrupting him; for I suddenly
recalled the superscription on the warranty deed.

"Exactly," said Colonel Doller, with a genial smile.  "Now, as I was
about to remark, it is notorious that this property of yours is situate
in the very heart of the delectable tract known to the world as the
North Shore.  I do not exaggerate when I say, in the language of my
popular brochure entitled, 'Homes for the Homeless,' that the North
Shore offers inducements, both for the living and for the dead, which
are not met with in any other part of our growing community.
Recognizing the merit of these inducements, immigration has turned its
tide toward the North Shore.  Ten years ago there was naught but
desolation where now the dandelion blooms and the voice of the
tree-toad is heard in song.  What do we see about us to-day?  To the
north of us the roof of Martin Howard's new barn glistens under the
smiling noonday sun.  Turning our gaze westward we behold the turrets
of the palatial residence which neighbor Bales has erected in Razzle
Street.  Yonder in the southeast horizon we detect the tall, lithe
flagpole which Major Ryson has set up as a graceful tribute to the
memory of the late lamented yacht club.  Cast your eyes where you will
and you will see convincing evidences of the onward, irresistible march
of civilization.

"This noble property of yours," continued Colonel Doller, "is the very
heart of all this pulsing, throbbing, bustling, teeming civilization.
Why, my dear Baker, I would not exchange (if I were you) the
opportunities now within your grasp for any other conceivable
thing--not even though millions were placed in the opposing scale!"

"I don't believe I understand you," said I.

"I will be more explicit," said Colonel Doller.  "The tide of
immigration has already overwhelmed this section; a great commercial
wave is closely following it.  Trade will soon locate its emporiums in
the midst of us.  Already two blocks to the south of this property a
commercial mart has begun to invite the attention and the patronage of
our public."

"You refer to Pusheck's grocery store?"

"The same," said Colonel Doller.  "Presently a barber-shop and a banana
stand will follow; then a bicycle repair-shop will spring up in our
midst, and from that moment our status as a commercial centre will be
assured."

As I was in no sense a business man I could not deny this.  To be frank
with you, it all looked very plausible to me.

"There is nothing else," continued Colonel Doller, "more practicable or
of greater value than foreseeing events and being prepared for them.
Now, here you are in the very midst of this flood of immigration, and
with the tidal wave of commerce at your very door.  Is your property in
a position to avail you handsomely in case you accede to the demands of
reason and conclude to yield to the persuasions of immigration and
commerce?  The consideration which should be paramount with you is
this: 'Having secured this property, how can I get rid of it to the
best advantage?'"

"But it is n't for sale," said I.

"True, quite true," answered Colonel Doller, with a weary, patient
smile, "but it will be.  What is North Shore property for if not for
sale?  You certainly do not intend to violate all the customs and
traditions of the community by holding out against an opportunity to
benefit yourself?  That, my dear Baker, would be folly."

"But nobody has asked us to sell," said I, apologetically.

"That is because your property is not in desirable shape," said the
colonel.  "If it were, you would have chances to enrich yourself in
less than a month.  You see your lot fronts one hundred feet on
Clarendon Avenue, and runs back two hundred and thirty-nine feet to a
prospective alley; this gives you one hundred feet of salable property,
but with a depth that actually involves a wicked waste of land.  Now
suppose you were to buy the twenty-five feet that lies to the south on
Clarendon Avenue just between your lot and Sandpile Terrace.  That
would give you a frontage of two hundred and thirty-nine feet on the
terrace, with a depth altogether of one hundred and twenty-five feet!
Do you follow me?"

"Yes, I see," said I, as this good and shrewd man's meaning gradually
stole upon me.

"With that additional twenty-five feet," resumed Colonel Doller, "you
could divide up the whole property into what you might call (if you
chose) Baker's Subdivision: then you could parcel it off into
twenty-foot lots with frontage on Sandpile Terrace--and there you are,
a rich man almost before you know it."

"Gracious me!  That _is_ a great idea!" said I, and I whistled softly
to myself.

"Great?  Well, I should say so!" exclaimed Colonel Doller.  "I knew it
would appeal to you, for you are a man of intelligence and capable of
foreseeing and appreciating potentialities."

"Who owns that strip?" I asked, referring to the twenty-five feet
adjoining our lot to the south.

"Well, it happens to be mine," said Colonel Doller.  "As soon as I
heard that you had purchased this place it occurred to me that you
ought to have that twenty-five feet in order to make the rest of your
property available.  So, without saying a word about it to anybody
else, I 've stepped over here to tell you that if you want it I 'll
throw that strip in to you at one hundred and twenty-five dollars per
front foot."

"We gave only one hundred dollars a foot for this lot," said I.

"Very true," said Colonel Doller, "but _my_ lot admits of giving you a
frontage of two hundred and thirty-nine feet on Sandpile Terrace."

"To be sure it does," said I.  "For the moment I quite lost sight of
that.  Well, I think very favorably of it, and I suspect Mr. Black
would insist upon my closing with you at once.  I 'll speak to Alice
about it."

"Be careful not to breathe a word of it to anybody else," suggested
Colonel Doller in a low, mysterious tone, "and whatever else you do,
don't let my partner, Leet, have even so much as an inkling of the fact
that we 've had a talk!  You understand?"

"It shall be kept a profound secret!" said I, with solemn earnestness.

Colonel Doller patted me reassuringly on the shoulder as he arose to
depart.

"Baker," said he, kindly, "you are as good as a rich man already!  You
get that extra twenty-five feet and make a subdivision of this
property, and you 'll have so much money you won't know what to do with
it!  Why, the next thing we'll hear of you, you'll be living in a
castle on a hill, with an observatory--just think of it, Baker, old
man! an observatory and a twelve-foot telescope capable of discovering
a new comet every night, rain or shine!"

The kind gentleman's enthusiasm quite took my breath away.  As I
watched him departing down the shady drive my heart overflowed with
gratitude, and again I thanked the providential Power that had given me
so many kind, solicitous, and self-sacrificing friends.

My conversation with Colonel Doller set me to indulging in thoughts
which were entirely new to me, and which pleased me with their novelty
and brilliancy.  I fancied myself already possessed of a wealth which
permitted me to pursue unreservedly those studies and investigations
which have been my delight since youth.  In imagination I pictured
myself the owner of a sightly residence surmounted by a spacious
observatory, in which was located a magnificent reflector-telescope
operated by the newest and nicest mechanism.  It was pleasing to be
rich, even in fancy.  My thoughts reverted to the children.

"Dear pampered darlings," I murmured, "they little know the lives of
independence and of ease that are before them.  They will never know
what it is to toil and to economize.  And Alice--sweet girl--this will
put an end to her worry about grocery bills!"

It is curious how completely I lost interest in our new house as soon
as the prospect of getting rich dawned upon me.  You will not believe
it, but after that talk with Colonel Doller I looked with actual
disdain upon the old Schmittheimer home and its broad, velvety lawn
under the noble trees.  I was so possessed with the fascinating scheme
suggested by Colonel Doller that I was even tempted to bid Uncle Si and
his men quit work until I had consulted with Alice as to the
feasibility of abandoning the proposed improvements and investing the
rest of Mr. Black's three thousand dollars in the twenty-five-foot
strip to the south of us.  I am glad now that the still small voice
within me prevailed, and that I saw Alice before saying anything to
Uncle Si.

"Reuben Baker," exclaimed Alice, "that property is _mine_ and I bought
it for a home, _not_ to _sell_.  If you and Colonel Doller want to
speculate, you need n't think you 're going to rope me into any of your
schemes."

"But, Alice, darling--"

"I sha' n't listen to a word of such nonsense," persisted Alice.  "So,
there."

I was inclined to remonstrate, but just at that moment the front door
bell rang and a telegraphic message was handed in.  The message was
from Cincinnati and it read in this wise:

"Shall be there to-morrow morning to look things over.   _Luther M.
Black_."

In the prospect of a visit from our patron, Mr. Black, I speedily
forgot all about Colonel Bobbett Doller and his pleasing panorama of
potentialities.  In this we see illustrated the wisdom of Providence in
so dispensing human events as to soothe the wounds of disappointment
with the balm of anticipation.




XI

I MAKE A STAND FOR MY RIGHTS

Shortly after Mr. Black's arrival that worthy gentleman was escorted
with all due formality to the old Schmittheimer place in Clarendon
Avenue.  Recognizing the fact that first impressions are lasting, we
determined that Mr. Black's first impressions of our purchase should be
favorable.  So we conducted him to our property by a rather circuitous
route.  The approach to the old Schmittheimer place from the north is
by all means the most agreeable; it leads by Mr. Rink's fine colonial
house and Martin Howard's new place and through an embowered avenue of
weeping willows, which, out of deference to his melancholy profession,
Mr. Dimmons, landscape gardener of our most prosperous cemetery, has
constructed in front of his beautiful residence in Thistle Patch Court;
a turn is then made upon Dandelion Place, and just one block this side
of Mr. Allworth's bowlder house (famous as the greatest bargain ever
acquired on the North Shore) another turn to the right brings you in
sight and within a few yards of our property.

Mr. Black was pleased with the neighborhood.  He is not a man of
enthusiasms; in all the years of my acquaintance with him I have never
known him to give way to an ebullition of any kind.  Yet upon this
occasion there was an expression upon his face when he first set eyes
upon our property which gave me to understand that he approved of our
purchase.  I hastened to clinch this favorable impression by apprising
him briefly of the proposition Colonel Bobbett Doller had made to me
the previous afternoon, and I flatter myself that, between us, Alice
and I made a pretty fair presentation of the merits of our new place.

"You seem to have begun reconstructing the house," said Mr. Black.
"Who is your architect?"

"We have no real architect," said I.  "In order to save expense we have
employed a boss carpenter capable not only of designing plans, but also
of executing them.  His name is Silas Plum."

"Plum?  That is a very familiar name to me," said Mr. Black.  "I wonder
whether he is any kin to the Plum family of Maine.  There was an
Elnathan Plum, who used to live in Aroostook, and I went to school with
him at Pocatapaug Academy in the winter of 1827.  The last time I
visited Maine I was told that he had moved west in 1840, or
thereabouts.  He married a third cousin of mine whose maiden name was
Eastman--Euphemia Eastman, as I recall it."

Of course I was unable to say what Uncle Si's antecedents were, but I
felt pretty certain that, if left to himself, Mr. Black would find out
all about them, for of all the people I ever met with Mr. Black surely
has the most astounding faculty for acquiring and remembering
genealogical data.

Our worthy friend consumed fully a half-hour's time inspecting our
front lawn, examining into the condition of the fence, learning what
kind of trees we had, and ascertaining the character and depth of the
soil.  I do not hesitate to affirm that he knew more about these things
at the end of that half-hour than I shall know at the end of ten years'
daily association with them.  I took pains, however, to make the most
of what small knowledge I had, and with considerable flourish I called
Mr. Black's attention to our lilac and gooseberry bushes, and with
conscious pride pointed out the wild grape vine in the corner of the
yard.  I told Mr. Black that it was our intention to have a kitchen
garden back of the house, and that among other things we should
cultivate onions of the choicest quality.  I had an object in
specifying the onions particularly, for I knew that Mr. Black had a
fondness (amounting almost to a passion) for this succulent fruit.

In all that I pointed out and in all that I said Mr. Black appeared to
take more than common interest.  One thing that seemed to please him
particularly was the discovery that three of our currant bushes had
escaped the malice of the workmen, and he promised Alice to write to
his niece at Biddeford for her recipe for making currant wine, a
beverage which, he assured us, would cheer but not inebriate.

Alice and I had made it up beforehand that we would leave Mr. Black and
Uncle Si together for a spell after we had introduced them to each
other; for we wanted our patron to learn for himself (unembarrassed by
our presence) just what had been done and how it had been done.  I take
it for granted that the two enjoyed their three hours' confabulation,
but I more than half suspect they spent precious little of that time in
a discussion of our affairs.  Mr. Black told me afterward that he had
ascertained that Uncle Si (or Silas, as he called him) was, as he had
surmised, a son of Elnathan Plum of Aroostook.

"Silas looks more like his mother's side of the family," said Mr.
Black.  "The Eastmans, as I remember them, were tall and spare, with
blue eyes and straight noses.  We have an Eastman in Cincinnati who
looks enough like Silas to be his brother, although he belongs to the
Ebenezer Eastman branch of the family, who located in Westboro, Mass,,
in 1765.  Tooker Eastman, the Cincinnati representative of the family,
is pastor of the First Church; he married Sukey, the widow of Amos
Sears, who (that is to say, Amos) was a son of Calvin Sears, who was
postmaster at Biddeford while I was a young man in that town."

From this and other similar morsels of information which Mr. Black let
fall in my hearing I gathered that Mr. Black's talk with Uncle Si had
been rather of a historical and reminiscent than of a business
character.  But this mattered not to me; it was clear that Mr. Black
approved of our purchase and of the improvements we contemplated, and
that was enough to insure our entire satisfaction.

When I came down from my study that evening I found Mr. Black and Alice
sitting in the parlor, looking mysteriously solemn.

"I have been advising your wife to make a will," said Mr. Black.

"Why, Alice dear, are you ill?" I asked, in genuine alarm.

Alice laughingly answered that she had never before felt heartier or in
finer spirits.

"Then why make a will?" I asked.  "Who ever heard of a person's making
a will unless he was sick?"

"You are laboring under a delusion too common to humanity," said Mr.
Black.  "In the midst of life we are in death.  It is during health and
while we are in full possession of our physical and mental faculties
that we should provide against that penalty which we all alike as
debtors are sooner or later to pay to nature.  Your wife has recently
become possessed by purchase of property that may eventually be of
large value.  It seems proper that she should draw a will indicating
her desires as to the disposal of this property in the event of her
demise."

"But what," I cried with honest feeling, "what would be lands or gold
without my Alice?"

"Calm your agitation, Reuben dear," said Alice.  "The suggestion which
Mr. Black has made does not involve you to the extent of making you an
heir."

"No," said Mr. Black, "it is proper that you should have a life estate
in the property, but the property itself should ultimately go to the
children."

"Still," said Alice, thoughtfully, "if Reuben were to survive me it
would be just like him to marry again, and I believe I should just rise
up in my grave if I thought another woman was living on the premises
which I myself had earned."

"Oh, but Alice, that is very unfair!" I expostulated.  "It is _I_ who
am earning the money--or, at least, it is I who expect to earn the
money wherewith to repay our dear friend, Mr. Black, the sums he has
advanced and may advance for our property!"

"There!  I suspected it all the time," cried Alice, indignantly.  "You
are already claiming the property--you are already preparing for my
death--I daresay you have your eyes already on the woman who is to step
into my place when I am gone!  But I won't die--no, I just won't!  But
I 'll make a will and I 'll give everything to the children, and you
sha' n't have a thing when I do die--not a thing, not even a life
estate--so there!"

Mr. Black and I were trying to soothe the dear creature, when there
came a knock at the front door.  Alice popped up and made her escape
into the dining-room.  The front door opened and the ruddy, smiling
face of neighbor Denslow appeared.

"Pardon my informality," said Mr. Denslow, cheerily; "can I come in?"

"By all means," I cried.  "You are in good season to meet my old and
valued friend, Mr. Black."

Mr. Denslow greeted Mr. Black effusively.  All my neighbors had heard
me speak of my generous patron, and they all took a really noble
neighborly pride in promoting my interests with him.  Mr. Denslow began
at once to dilate in eloquent terms upon the bargain Alice and I had
secured in the old Schmittheimer place.

"And, by the way," said Mr. Denslow, turning to me, "the mention of
your bargain reminds me of the object of my call.  August
Schmittheimer, a son of the widow, came to my office to-day to tell me
that he is prepared to let you have the thirty-three feet in the rear
of your lot at a merely nominal price--say two hundred dollars."

I had cast envious eyes upon this particular strip of ground several
times.  Alice had remarked that it would afford an ideal spot upon
which to hang out the washing on Monday mornings; at other times it
would serve as a convenient playground for Josephine and little
Erasmus.  It really seemed like a special Providence that what we had
been wishing for should unexpectedly be thrust within our very grasp.

"I think that we should have that extra strip by all means," said I;
and then I added, by way of demonstrating the wisdom of my opinion to
Mr. Black: "We shall thus be enabled to enlarge our onion bed to
pretentious proportions."

This argument must have convinced Mr. Black, for he remarked at once
that he recognized the wisdom of acquiring the extra piece of land at
the bargain price suggested.

"If it pleases you, then," said Mr. Denslow, "I will attend the first
thing in the morning to having the investigation into the title begun,
and I suppose that within the next three days the deal can be
consummated and the property duly transferred to Mrs. Baker."

Too often I do not think of the bright and felicitous thing to say or
do until it is too late.  On this occasion, however, a really shrewd
and happy thought occurred to me.  The somewhat malicious purpose it
contemplated was justified, I claim, by the context (so to speak) of
events.

"Neighbor Denslow," said I, confidentially, "when it comes to the
transfer of that property please be so kind as to have the warranty
deed made to me."

Mr. Denslow looked so surprised, and so did Mr. Black, that I deemed an
explanation necessary.




XII

I AM DECEIVED IN MR. WAX

I went on to say that it seemed to me to be unwise to invest too much
power in Alice's hands; that _I_ had certain rights which should be
protected, and that if I was not to be assured a life estate in Alice's
property I ought to have at least thirty-three feet to which I could,
in an emergency, retire to spend the evening of my existence in peace
and security.

"Possessed of that thirty-three feet," said I, "I make no question that
I shall soon be able to bring Alice to terms.  Give me the power to
stand on my own patch of ground and defy Alice every Monday morning
when the weekly wash is ready to be hung out, and I will cheerfully
risk the future."

Mr. Denslow and Mr. Black are sensible and loyal men; they recognized
the propriety of standing by me in this emergency, and it was agreed
that the extra piece of ground should be conveyed to me.

That night I dreamed that Alice had been called to her heavenly reward
and that I had been turned out of doors by our heartless children.  I
was an aged and tottering man.  The wind blew lustily and a storm was
raging.  I drew my threadbare coat closer about me, for I was shivering
with the cold.

"Alas," I cried (in my dream), "whither shall I turn?  Is there no spot
on earth where I can die in peace?"

Then, O joy! it occurred to me (in my dream) that I owned the
thirty-three feet back of the dear old home.  Two years' taxes were due
on it, but it was still mine--all mine!

"The snow is deep and clean and hospitable there," I cried (still in my
dream), "and it is all mine own!  To that snowbank will I make my way,
and there will I lie down to sleep my last sleep."

But just then I awoke to discover that it was only a dream.  Had I been
of a superstitious nature I might have read in this dream divers
premonitions and strange significances.  As it was, it merely confirmed
me in my belief that I had done wisely in securing that
thirty-three-foot strip.

Mr. Black went back home next day, and nothing more was said for the
nonce about a "will" or a "life estate," or any matter thereunto
appertaining, and disagreeable to Alice and to me alike.  The cold
weather having melted away into sunshine and warmth, I once more began
to be deeply interested in horticulture and floriculture, and this,
too, in spite of the ineffaceable scars which the spade-wielding
vandals had left in the large front yard in the alleged interest of the
sewer, water, and gas-pipes.

This enthusiasm of mine in behalf of matters of which I knew absolutely
nothing was retired by my respected neighbor, Fadda Pierce, who is so
learned in all affairs involving flowers and shrubbery that I actually
believe that what he does n't know about them is n't worth knowing.
Fadda's cottage is covered with every variety of dainty and luxurious
vine, and in his yard bloom all kinds of rare and beautiful flowers.
He is so famed for his fondness for and luck with flowers that I felt
grateful to the dear old gentleman when he visited me with a view to
advising me as to the kind of flowers I ought to plant in my lawn and
around the house.

It was then that I learned of the existence of shrubs, vines, and
flowers of which I had never before heard.  It is indeed amazing that
an ordinarily intelligent man can reach the age of forty-five years
without being able to profess truthfully a more or less intimate
acquaintance with hydrangeas, fuchsias, taraxacums, syringas,
sisymbriums, gilliflowers, kentaphyllons, maydenheer, chrysanthemums,
orchids, geraniums, lichens, laburnums, jasmines, heliotropes,
gentians, eucalyptuses, crocuses, carnations, dahlias, cactuses,
billybuttons, anemones, anthropomorphons, amaranths, etc., etc.  Fadda
Pierce did not chide me for my heathenish ignorance; he seemed to take
it for granted that I had been too busy acquiring knowledge in other
lines to have time to devote to research in botany.  He was much more
considerate than neighbor Roth was when he pulled up his team in front
of my house one day and asked me how far it was to Glencoe.  I answered
that I did not know; whereupon he shrugged his shoulders and muttered:
"I thought as much, by gosh!  You can tell how fur 't is to the sun,
the moon, an' the stars, but you can't tell how fur 't is to Glencoe!"

Fadda Pierce advised me to set out about two dozen cobies (I think he
called them) around our new colonial front porch, and then he kindly
designated certain spots in the yard where beds ought to be constructed
for certain flowers, the names of which he wrote down on a slip of
paper.  Some of these beds were to be circular, some square, and some
oblong.  Fadda told me that I would require at least three loads of
black dirt, and he gave me the address of a person who dealt in this
precious commodity at one dollar and a half a load.  I called upon this
person at once and ordered the three loads of black dirt to be
delivered immediately.  I then bethought myself that I required an
outfit of garden tools; so I made my way to the nearest hardware shop
and purchased a spade, a hoe, a rake, a wheelbarrow, a watering can, a
trowel, and a pruning-knife.  I trundled the barrow home, with the
other purchases in it.

The day was exceedingly warm, and my appearance in this new rôle
excited the derision of my neighbors; but I felt rather flattered to be
called Farmer Baker, and I was glad to give the Baylors, the Edwardses,
the Dollers, the Tiltmans, the Rushes, the Sissons, and the rest to
understand that I by no means disdained to condescend to the humble
plane of an agriculturist.  Now that I come to think of it, I remember
to have read somewhere that Galileo took his recreation at hoeing and
grubbing in the vineyard adjoining his observatory.

As I trundled the barrow up the winding road of the Schmittheimer place
I became aware that a man was following me.  So I stopped and waited
for him to overtake me.  His appearance indicated poverty and all its
attendant miseries.

"Good sir," said the stranger, "pardon me for this intrusion, but
misfortunes of a most grievous character compel me to thrust myself
upon your mercy.  You behold in me, sir, one of the most hapless of
creatures, one whom adversity has buffeted with cruel pertinacity, and
finally driven out to become a homeless and friendless wanderer upon
the face of the earth.  My name, sir, is Percival Wax, born and reared
under the auspices of riches, but now forced by the reverses of
remorseless fate to importune you for the wherewithal to procure food
and lodging."

"Mr. Wax," said I, "your appearance by no means belies your words.
Your raiment is torn and soiled; your shoes are not mates, and your hat
was evidently made for a larger head than yours.  I also read in your
dim eyes, your unkempt beard, and your dishevelled hair corroboration
of your claims to intimacy with adversity.  While I sympathize with you
in your misfortune, I cannot break one of the imperative rules which
govern the conduct of my life; if you are willing to work I will gladly
provide you with the means of relief from your embarrassment."

"Work?  Ah, kind sir," said Mr. Wax, eagerly, "it is that which I have
vainly sought for weeks.  I have been out of employment ever since the
combined efforts of our National Administration and of our incompetent
Congress succeeded in sowing the seeds of distrust in every mind,
thereby stagnating business and precipitating a financial crisis, from
the débris of which I can never hope to arise."

"Can you make flower-beds, Mr. Wax?" I asked.

"Kind gentleman," he answered, "my profession before financial ruin
overwhelmed me was that of a landscape gardener."

This was, indeed, a marvellously pleasing coincidence.  Here was the
very man I needed.

"Take up the barrow, Mr. Wax, and follow me," said I.

I showed him where I wanted the flowerbeds made--the circular, the
square, and the oblong.  He was first to remove the turf and then fill
in and square up the beds with black dirt.  I found him quick to
understand, and he seemed to be anxious to get to work.

"You can begin as soon as you please," said I.  "Meanwhile I shall go
to luncheon, and on my return I shall bring you three or four mustard
sandwiches and some hard-boiled eggs to stay you until you have
finished your task."

"Thank you, kind sir," said Mr. Wax with tears of gratitude in his
voice.

I was gone an hour or more.  At luncheon I told Alice of what I had
done, but she did not seem to share my enthusiasm at having provided
Mr. Wax with an opportunity to turn an honest penny or two.  She very
clearly indicated to me her distrust of all tramps, to which class she
was sure Mr. Wax belonged.  Thereupon I warned Alice against the
inhumanity and wickedness of insensibility to the sufferings of others,
and I was glad that the children were at the table with us to hear my
remarks in praise of that charity which has compassion for all
conditions of misery.

Upon my return to the Schmittheimer place I was disappointed to find
that no progress had been made with the flower-beds.

"I wonder where Mr. Wax is?" said I to Uncle Si.

"Do you mean that ---- tramp that was here about noon?" asked Uncle Si.

"He may have been a tramp," said I, purposely ignoring Uncle Si's
profane epithet (for I do not approve of profanity).

"He went away shortly after you went," said Uncle Si.  "I asked him
where he was going with the wheelbarrow and the garden tools, and he
said you had hired him to take them over to your house in Heavenward
Avenue for you."

"Mr. Wax lied to you," said I.  "He has stolen that barrow and those
tools."

Uncle Si consoled me by telling me that in all human probability Mr.
Wax had sold his stealings by this time and was already squandering his
ill-gotten gains in a barroom.  I lamented not only the ingratitude and
dishonesty of this man whom I had sought to befriend, but also the loss
of my barrow and my garden tools.  There was, however, some consolation
in the thought that my experience would serve me to good purpose in the
future.

The three mustard sandwiches and the two hard-boiled eggs which I had
brought from home for Mr. Wax's luncheon I now took down into the
cellar and fed to Alice, the mother cat.  Had I been a superstitious
person I should not have performed this kind deed by one whom many
might have regarded as the prognostic (if not actually the cause) of
the many evils which had befallen me of late.  As it was, I took a kind
of spiteful satisfaction in observing that the gaunt beast did not
exhibit that exuberant fondness for mustard sandwiches and hard-boiled
eggs which might be confidently looked for in the mother of six healthy
and always hungry kittens.




XIII

EDITOR WOODSIT A TRUE FRIEND

One morning--it was a Thursday morning, as I distinctly recall--I was
much surprised to find that work upon the house had practically been
suspended.  I was sure there could not have been a strike, for I told
the workmen at the beginning that whenever they felt as if they were
not getting enough pay they must come to me about it and I would raise
their wages.  They had already been to me three times and received an
increase of pay each time.  So I felt moderately secure against a
strike.  Uncle Si explained the situation briefly.

"The plasterers were to have begun today," said he, "but there is no
water for them; so I had to send them away."

"No water?" I cried.  "No water?  Then tell me, I pray, why this noble
front yard of ours has been converted into a dreary waste by those
vandals with their spades and picks?  Why is that deep, wide, ragged
ditch still yawning in our faces and threatening the death of every
tree at whose roots it crawls?  And why did I pay Sibley the plumber
forty-five dollars last Saturday night, if it were not for the laying
of water pipe in that hideous ditch?  No water, indeed!"

"It is nobody's fault but the city's," explained Uncle Si.  "The pipe
is all laid and nothing remains but for the city to make the connection
with the main in the street.  You see _we_ can't tap the main; that is
for the city to do."

"Then why does n't the city do it?" I asked.

Uncle Si shrugged his shoulders.

"The city _ought_ to do a good many things it _does n't_ do," said he.
"They promised to have that main tapped at eight o'clock last Monday
morning, and here it is ten o'clock Thursday morning and not a drop of
water on the place!  There is n't any use kicking, for those
politicians down at the City Hall do things their own way and take
their own time doing 'em!"

I saw that argument with Uncle Si meant simply a waste of time, so I
determined to go down-town to the City Hall myself to see whether no
eloquence or indignation of my own would move the derelict officers to
a performance of their duty.  On the train I fell in with Mr. Leet, who
was on his way to his place of business.  He had not seen me since our
purchase of the Schmittheimer property, and he took this first occasion
to congratulate me upon what he called one of those bargains which
occur at rare intervals in a century.  Finding me in a felicitous mood,
Mr. Leet went on to say that the property we already possessed would be
enhanced in value an hundred-fold and would be rendered marketable
instantaneously by the further acquisition of the twenty-five feet
adjoining it upon the north.

"Yes," said I, "Mr. Doller spoke to me about that twenty-five-foot
strip some time ago."

"Aha, so Doller has been approaching you, has he?" said Mr. Leet,
softly.  "Well, Doller is very cunning--very cunning, indeed.  But he
has nothing to do with the _north_ strip.  _He_ owns the twenty-five
feet to the _south_ of your property, the piece fronting on Sandpile
Terrace, and a very malarious location it is, too.  I pledge you my
word, Mr. Baker, I have seen mosquitos hovering over that Doller strip
at night as big as bats!"

I could neither deny nor affirm the truth of this assertion.

"My twenty-five-foot strip to the north," continued Mr. Leet, "is high
and dry and sightly.  The view it commands of the Water Works is
indescribably fine.  You are surely practical enough to see, Mr. Baker,
that by purchasing that strip and throwing it in with yours you will
have a subdivision fronting upon Dandelion Place which would offer
unparalleled inducements to the seeker after suburban property.  What
is more," added Mr. Leet in a confidential whisper, "it would not
surprise me a bit if there were coal deposits in the twenty-five-foot
strip of mine.  I have very distinct suspicions, but the paramount
importance of my other business interests has prevented me from making
the investigation which might enrich me beyond all calculation.  Now,
you have time, and if you feel disposed to take that property I 'll let
you have it at the merely nominal price of one hundred and twenty-five
dollars a front foot."

This seemed reasonable enough, particularly when I considered the
chances of there being a coal mine on the property.  However, as I had
told Mr. Doller, so I now told Mr. Leet: I would first have to speak to
Alice about the matter.  Then I confided to Mr. Leet the object of my
mission down-town.  Presumably in the hope of insuring and clinching my
devotion to his interests as represented in his twenty-five-foot lot,
Mr. Leet manifested solicitude in my behalf and inveighed bitterly
against the shiftlessness of the municipal administration as
illustrated in the neglect to tap the water main for the benefit of my
property.

"The most aggravatingly exasperating part of it all," says I, "is that
I am a Republican and have been one for thirty years.  Moreover, I am a
reformer, having helped to organize the Civic Federation and having
served for somewhat more than a year as chairman of the Special
Committee on Ash Barrels and Garbage Boxes in the third precinct of the
Twenty-fifth Ward.  I made several addresses during the last campaign
in advocacy of civil-service reform and all those other reforms which
are invariably advocated and promised by the party which is not in
power but wants to be.  In the thirty years that I have been a
Republican I have never asked a favor of my party, and it does seem
just a bit ungrateful that the Republican reform municipal
administration which I helped to elect should seize with apparent
avidity upon its first opportunity to snub me by refusing to tap the
public water main in front of my property."

"You should see Mayor Speedy about it," suggested Mr. Leet.

"I thought of doing so," said I, "but as I had already determined to
approach him with reference to changing the name of Mush Street to
Clarendon Avenue, I concluded that I ought not to call upon him with
this complaint about the water.  I particularly wish to avoid all
appearance of hampering the administration with importunities and
complaints of a personal nature."

"A man of your reputation," said Mr. Leet, "should certainly have the
strongest kind of a pull at the City Hall."

"You may not believe it," said I, "but I do not know a man in the City
Hall.  I visit the place but twice a year, and my dealings on those
occasions are restricted to a haughty young foreigner, who graciously
permits me to pay him the amount of my water tax and then waves me to
another foreigner who in turn waves me to the door.  No, I have no
influence at the City Hall, and as I was telling Editor Woodsit last
week--"

"Do you know Editor Woodsit?" asked Mr. Leet, interrupting me.

"Indeed I do," said I; "he has promised to print my essay on the
nebular hypothesis of Professor Lecouvrier as soon as his contract with
the monometallist college professors expires.  He is one of the most
intimate friends I have."

"Then he is just the one to fix that City Hall matter for you," said
Mr. Leet.  "Woodsit is the most potent political influence in the midst
of us."

It was hard to understand why a potent political influence should be
invoked in order to secure the tapping of a water main.  However, I
determined to enlist the coöperation of my journalistic friend.  Twenty
or thirty people were waiting outside Editor Woodsit's door.  This
number included noted clergymen, poets, authors, politicians, jurists,
merchants, etc., etc.  By some means or another, Editor Woodsit learned
I was among the waiting throng, and he sent for me to come in.  His
private office is spacious and elegantly furnished.  The walls are hung
with splendid tapestries and costly oil paintings.  Over Editor
Woodsit's desk appears the legend, "The Pen Is Mightier Than the
Sword."  Near the desk are rows of nickel-plated tubes, about six feet
in height and two feet in diameter; the lids or covers to these tubes
are opened by means of a keyboard in front of the editor.  The tubes
themselves contain the heads of the departments of the State and
municipal governments.

"What you tell me pains me deeply," said Mr. Woodsit, after he heard my
story.  "But there is no need of going to the City Hall about it; the
matter can be attended to here.  I never trifle with underlings when
the responsible heads are at hand."

Editor Woodsit reached over and touched a button on the keyboard; it
was button No. 9.  Immediately the lid or top of tube No. 9 flew open
and the head and face of a man appeared; it was the head and face of
Commissioner Dent.

"This friend of mine," said Editor Woodsit, sternly, "complains that he
can't get your department to connect the pipe with the water main in
front of his property.  My friend is a Republican, Dent, and he is a
reformer.  What excuse have you to offer for neglecting him?"

Commissioner Dent turned very pale and he vainly tried to stammer an
apology.

"This is a pretty kind of reform!" cried Editor Woodsit, savagely.  "If
a similar complaint occurs again I shall have your case investigated by
my legal and spiritual counsellor, Joshua Selah, and may be have you
impeached.  Now see that Mr. Baker's reasonable demands are complied
with at once."

With these words Editor Woodsit touched another button, and the head
and face of Commissioner Dent disappeared and the top closed down over
the box.  It was all the work of two or three minutes, and it was
certainly the most marvellous experience I had ever met with.  My
wonderment increased when I learned an hour later, upon my arrival
home, that less than fifteen minutes (as I figure it) after I left
Editor Woodsit's office an employé of Commissioner Dent's department
came galloping up to my place on a foam-flecked steed, and, vaulting
from his saddle, unswung his melting-furnace, soldering-irons, and
other tools, and, quicker than you could say a pater noster, tapped the
water main and made the desired connection with the pipe that fed my
premises.

"I guess you must have a pull at the City Hall," said Uncle Si; and
then he went on to tell me how people who have no pull have to wait
weeks, sometimes, before their just requirements are answered by the
municipal authorities.  If what Uncle Si tells me is true I cannot be
too glad that I have what is even more efficacious than a pull at the
City Hall--a friend in Editor Woodsit.




XIV

THE VICTIM OF AN ORDINANCE.

And now that a plentiful supply of water was provided, it seemed proper
to celebrate by giving the lawn (poor abused thing!) a deluge of the
refreshing element.  The exceeding ardor of the sun and the absence of
rain had wrought havoc with the grass and shrubbery.  The drought
seemed determined to finish the work of destruction which the workmen,
with their picks and spades, had begun.  With a joyous heart,
therefore, I applied myself to the task of rescuing the fainting
vegetation.  I borrowed Mr. Tiltman's hose because it was the best and
longest in the neighborhood and was provided with a patent nozzle which
was so versatile that there was actually no detail in its business
which it did not perform in a most masterly way.  I shall never forget
the feeling of exultation with which I stood on that expansive lawn and
sprayed the parched grass and drooping shrubbery.  I fancied I could
see the thirsty blades and leaves reach up to drink in the restoring
element.  My thoughts while I was thus engaged were similar, I suppose,
to those of benevolent men who hasten to the succor of their suffering
fellow-beings.  I can imagine that it was with some such inspiring
feelings that relief was borne to Livingstone in Africa and to Greely
in the Arctic Circle.  To the good man it is always a pleasure to do an
act of magnanimity, and the fact that my considerate regard for our
lawn involved no danger or privation did not serve in the least to
abate my satisfaction in the performance of my task.

While I was thus engaged I observed a stranger coming up the lawn
toward me.  I bade him a very good morning, but he seemed disinclined
to exchange civilities with me.  He was a low-browed, roughish-looking
fellow, and I conceived an immediate dislike for him.

"You 'll have to give me your name," said he, very gruffly.

"For what purpose?" I asked, for his tone and manner nettled me.

"I 'm a detective," said he, exhibiting a silver star on his vest
front, "and I 'm on the trail of you ducks that sprinkle your lawns
after legal hours.  Oh, I 'm onto your racket."

"Sir," said I, indignantly, "I have made no racket.  I am a quiet,
law-abiding citizen, and this is my own lawn to do with as I please."

"Come, now," said he, insolently, "don't give me any funny business.
You 're sprinklin' after hours and I 'm going to report you to police
headquarters.  There 's no use of kickin', so you 'd better give me
your name an' save trouble."

"Sir," I cried, "Reuben Baker is not a name to be ashamed of, and if
you think that by any of your underhand hocus pocus you can trespass on
my premises and prevent my caring for my own property you are grandly
mistaken."

"You 'll sing a different song to-morrer," said the fellow, and I am
sure I heard him chuckling to himself as he walked away.

Later in the day I learned from neighbor Baylor that I had indeed
transgressed the law by operating the lawn hose at ten o'clock in the
morning.  It seems that there is an ordinance imposing a fine upon all
who sprinkle their lawns between eight o'clock in the morning and five
o'clock in the afternoon.

I declared in very vigorous English that I would never submit to any
such outrage, and my indignation touched the boiling point when, still
later in the day, a policeman came to my house and handed me a document
apprising me that I must give a good and sufficient bond for my
appearance the next morning before his honor, Justice Fatty, to answer
to the charge of having maliciously, etc., defied, disobeyed and broken
the ordinance, etc.  I went at once to seek the counsel of Lawyer
Miles, for whose legal acumen and forensic eloquence I had harbored the
profoundest veneration ever since I had heard his prosecution of a man
named Tackleton for causing the death of neighbor Baylor's pet dog.  I
recall that on that occasion there was not a dry eye in the court and
that even the defendant himself wept copiously; whereupon the presiding
justice, fearing that he might be unduly influenced by the emotion of
the auditors, ordered the constable to clear the room of everybody not
a party to the cause.  At this supreme moment Lawyer Miles, with
streaming eyes and amid choking sobs, cried out: "Mercy, your honor; in
the name of the tenderest and holiest of human considerations I appeal
for mercy!  Turn out the men-folks if you will, but spare, oh, spare
the women and children."

Ever since this memorable occasion I have regarded Lawyer Miles as the
foremost of living jurists, and it was the most natural thing in the
world that I should determine to confide to him any legal business of
mine that might arise--in which determination I was confirmed by a
suspicion that Lawyer Miles never charged his neighbors any fee for his
professional services.

I was not a little surprised when, having heard my story, Lawyer Miles
counselled me to plead guilty to the charge and to pay the regulation
fine, which together with the costs (so called), amounted to seven
dollars and fifty cents.  It was in vain that I represented to Lawyer
Miles the outrage of punishing a man for seeking to beautify his
premises, and thereby to contribute to the comfort and delectation of
the public generally.  Lawyer Miles took the narrow view that the
ordinance had been violated, and that, therefore, the fine should be
paid.  "The ordinance may be an unwise one," said he.  "In that event
we should elect a city council that will repeal it.  But so long as the
law exists it should be enforced."

The advice of Lawyer Miles, coupled with the tears of Alice, finally
prevailed.  Alice fancied that I was in danger of being committed to
prison, and she hysterically represented to me the horror of the
ignominy which would ever thereafter attach to our family name.  In one
breath she proposed to send post haste for our pastor, the Rev. Dr.
Sungaulus, in the hope that by means of his spiritual ministrations I
might be dissuaded from further defiance of the law; in the next breath
she conjured me by every regard I had for the future of our
children--Galileo, Herschel, Fanny, Erasmus, and Josephine--to listen
to the Voice of Reason.  At the mention of Josephine's name I weakened,
for, as I have already intimated to you, the innocent babe has acquired
a powerful hold upon the tendrils of my heart.  In an instant my anger
departed.

"It shall be as you say, Alice: I will pay the fine and costs.  But
from this moment I consecrate my life to the election of councilmen
from the Twenty-fifth Ward who will repeal that odious ordinance and
make it legal for property-owners to sprinkle their lawns when and how
they please."

In looking back over the short period of the history of "our house" I
find no other incident so disagreeable as this one which I have just
narrated.  Even at this remote date I cannot refer to it without
feeling my gorge rise.  By nature I am peaceful, and I am exceeding
slow to wrath.  But anything that savors of injustice exasperates me to
the degree of frenzy.  I am still fixed in my determination to secure
the repeal of the ordinance which robbed me of seven dollars and fifty
cents and is jeoparding the lives of my lilac bushes, my peonies, my
twin cherry-trees (George and Martha), and my grass.  I intend to see
that the matter is brought up at the next quarterly meeting of the
Buena Park Benevolent and Protective Citizens' Association, and you can
depend upon it that when that association speaks its tones are heard
around the world and go thundering down the ages.

This affair of mine with the odious ordinance was duly reported in the
daily newspapers through the delectable medium of the column headed
"Minor Criminal Items."  It did not conduce to my equanimity to see my
name catalogued with persons arrested for sneak thievery,
pocket-picking, drunkenness, brawling, and mayhem.  I never before
suspected that my friends made a practice of perusing the criminal
calendar, but after the appearance of that disagreeable item in print I
began to get letters from old acquaintances condoling with me and
asking whether they could be of any service to me in my trouble.  Some
of these letters must have been dispatched in a spirit of humor, but I
see nothing mirthfull in the association of an honest man's name with
crime, and the people who have sought to poke fun at me in this
unpleasant affair need not be at all surprised if I do not bow to them
the next time we meet.

Another class of people I have no sympathy with are those who do not
recognize in our purchase of a home a cause for general joy and
congratulation.  You may not believe it, but it is nevertheless a fact
that within the last two months I have met people and apprised them of
our purchase and they have never so much as expressed even the least
bit of delight.  My old friend Slashon Tomsing, who makes considerable
pretense to being interested in the public welfare--why, when I met him
at the Civic Federation rooms not long ago and began to tell him of our
new home, instead of being swept away (as it were) upon a tidal wave of
rapture, he immediately changed the theme of conversation and asked my
opinion of bimetallism.  I gave him to understand very distinctly that
the public was in very poor business if it suffered itself to become
interested in bimetallism or in any other ism so long as it had an
opportunity to discuss "our new house" as a living, absorbing, and
burning theme.

Another friend, my old and particularly valued friend, Professor Sniff,
curator of Mahon's Museum of Marvels--but I'll let that affair pass;
for Professor Sniff certainly did not intend to wound my feelings by
his apparent indifference; moreover, he has promised to send me for my
private collection all the duplicates that occur in section E of his
museum, which section is devoted exclusively to dried centipedes,
tarantulas, and beetles and to Mexican lizards in bottles of alcohol.

All who have ever engaged in the enterprise of a new house will agree
with me when I say that nothing else wounds one more deeply than the
indifference of the rest of humanity to what is nearest and dearest to
his heart.  When I walk the street nowadays I actually pity the crowds
of people I see, because, forsooth, they know nothing of the great joy
I have acquired in that blessed house.  Alice made me take her to hear
a Mme. Melba in Italian opera last month at the Auditorium.  As we came
away Alice asked: "Was n't it grand?"

"Yes," I answered, "and yet amid it all I was oppressed by a feeling of
sadness.  For, of all the six thousand souls in that splendid building,
only you and I, dear Alice, were aware that the old Schmittheimer place
had passed into the possession of the two happiest people on earth."




XV

THE QUESTION OF INSURANCE

My neighbor, Mr. Teddy, called on me one morning as I sat under a
willow tree watching the tinner at work on the roof and wondering
whether it was really as nice and warm on a tin roof under an
unobscured sun as it seemed to be.

"Do you know," said Mr. Teddy, cordially, "this is the first time I
have ever visited this place.  Frequently in my walks of an evening I
have passed here, and, in common with others, I have admired the
graceful slope of the lawn, the stately dignity of the trees, and the
bright colors of the flowers that here and there dot the verdant
expanse.  Surely in the possession of this charming estate you are, my
dear friend, one of the most fortunate of mortals.  Your life amid
these picturesque environments, in this sequestered spot, far from the
din and turmoil of the urban throng, will be in every respect ideal--a
dream, sir, a poetic dream."

You will perhaps understand by this time that I regard Mr. Teddy as an
exceptionally worthy and pleasant gentleman.

"And," continued Mr. Teddy, "it would be cruel if your studious
researches in this academic grove were by any chance to be interrupted
by any harassing business care.  The serpent of worldly solicitude,
sir, should never be suffered to enter this veritable Eden."

"You are right, my good friend and neighbor," said I, "but how can I
prevent the intrusion of care, since, alas! I am merely human?"

"It behooves you to make provision against every contingency," answered
Mr. Teddy.  "Do I understand that you carry insurance upon this
residence?"

"Insurance?  Why, no, I think not," said I.  "Insurance is a matter I
never thought of."

"Is it possible," cried Mr. Teddy, "that you have neglected to provide
against that serious loss which would accrue if a careless workman were
to drop a lighted match in yonder pile of shavings?  Think for one
moment, sir, of the ruin that would confront you if this magnificent
but uninsured architectural pile were to be swept away by the pale hand
of the remorseless fire fiend!  I beg of you to provide yourself with
the means of redress ere you are overtaken by the bitter pill of
adversity.  Mr. Baker, your beautiful home should be insured at once!"

It then occurred to me for the first time that neighbor Teddy was the
general western agent of the Royal Liliuokalani Fire, Marine and
Accident Insurance Company of Hawaii.  I have often wondered why a man
when he embarks in the insurance business invariably attaches himself
to a concern located in some far distant clime, and now that I am
thinking of it, I will add that I have often wondered why the efficacy
of patent medicines is so often testified to by the affidavits of
people with strange names who reside in queer streets in obscure
hamlets hundreds of miles distant from the place of publication.

"It would be wise of you," said Mr. Teddy, "to let me write you out a
policy immediately.  It is always prudent to take time by the forelock.
Our rates are low, and, as you doubtless are aware, our company is the
most prosperous in the world.  We were awarded a medal at the World's
Fair.

"I know absolutely nothing about these things," said I, candidly, "but
I suppose we ought to have the place insured.  I should be glad to have
you drop around some evening and talk the matter over with Alice and
me."

To this suggestion Mr. Teddy took very kindly and he promised to call
very soon.  As he retired down the gravel walk Colonel Bobbett Doller
came up the same.  The two gentlemen saluted each other very coldly.

"Colonel Doller is coming to talk to me about that twenty-five foot
strip of land," says I to myself; but I was in error.

"Ah, good morning, neighbor Baker, good morning!" cried Colonel Doller,
cheerily.  "Beautiful weather we 're having--too dry, though, much too
dry!  All nature is parched.  We need rain badly; otherwise the most
lamentable consequences will follow.  I dare say you have noticed by
the paper how alarmingly prevalent conflagrations have become?"

"Have they?" I asked, in genuine surprise.

"Shockingly so," answered Colonel Doller.  "The record is simply
appalling.  If this thing continues a lot of the little mushroom
insurance companies will fail; it 's an ill wind that blows nobody
good.  The public will presently awaken to a realization of the danger
of patronizing the irresponsible concerns which are trying to do
business under the shadow of the old and reliable companies."

"Do you really think there will be a panic?" I asked.

"Among the small fry, yes," answered Colonel Doller; "but nothing short
of a universal cataclysm will feaze to the slightest degree the
Vesuvius Assurance Company (limited) of Piddleton, England, the oldest
and staunchest insurance company in the world, of which I am, as
perhaps you know, the general manager for the western hemisphere."

"We--and when I say we," continued Colonel Doller, "I mean the
Vesuvius--we have a cash capital of eighteen million pounds, and a
reserve fund of twelve million five hundred and sixty-eight thousand
two hundred pounds, three shillings, and six pence.  Our losses last
year were six million three hundred thousand pounds in round numbers,
and our premiums were eight million five hundred and sixty-three
thousand two hundred and sixty-five pounds and eighteen pence.  So you
can see for yourself (for figures do not lie) that the Vesuvius is as
solid as the everlasting hills."

"The Royal Liliuokalani is a pretty good company, is n't it?" says I.

"The Royal Liliuokalani?" repeated Colonel Doller.  "The Royal
Liliuokalani?  Let me see--I don't know that I ever heard of it.  It's
a Milwaukee concern, is n't it?"

"No," said I, "my understanding is that it is a Hawaiian enterprise."

"Possibly so--very likely it is," said Colonel Doller, indifferently.
"There are so many of these little schemes springing up nowadays that I
do not pretend to keep track of them.  If, however, you should at any
time contemplate insuring you will, of course, come to the Vesuvius."

I repeated to Colonel Doller what I had told Mr. Teddy about the
feasibility of consulting Alice.  Colonel Doller replied that while the
Vesuvius was entirely too big and too conservative a company ever to
skirmish for business, he would, purely out of regard for his long
friendship for me, call that evening to have a business talk with Alice
and me.

Later in the day I had a visit from Frederick Jeems, another neighbor
engaged in the profession of fire insurance.  He began his attack
adroitly by complimenting my new house and by regretting that I was
shingling the roof.

"But so long as you 're insured," said he, carelessly, "I don't know
that it makes any difference whether you use shingles or slate."

I confessed that I had not taken out any insurance, and this gave him
the desired opportunity to bring up his batteries of eloquence, of
argument, of statistics, and of figures.  Before he was done he had
overwhelmed the Royal Liliuokalani of Hawaii and the Vesuvius of
Piddleton with a genuine avalanche of scorn and derision, and had quite
convinced me that the only solvent and secure insurance concern in the
world was the Deutsche Kaiser of Bomberg-am-Rhine.  In an inspired
moment I bade Mr. Jeems come round that very evening to present his
facts and figures to Alice, and I laughed slyly to myself as I pictured
the meeting between himself, Mr. Teddy, and Colonel Doller.  This may
strike you as having been malicious, but I claim that under the
circumstances I was warranted in planning this practical joke.

Having disposed of these three gentlemen, I flattered myself that I was
temporarily done with the vexatious details of insurance, and I was
getting ready to bank up one of the flowerbeds with black dirt when who
should come along but another neighbor, and a very charming one,
too--Angus Cameron Macleod?  For two years we have been more or less
intimate.  Macleod combines many strangely diverse accomplishments.  He
executes the sword dance with singular grace, and he recites Robert
Burns' poems and passages from "Marmion" by the yard, and with
inspiring animation.  Although I am in no sense a music critic, nor
even a connoisseur, I will confess that I have often been actually
transported with delight by neighbor Macleod's rendition of "The
Campbells Are Coming" on the bagpipes.  At the same time he is a
skilful rhetorician and severe logician, as all who have heard his
defence of Presbyterianism will testify, and I will concede that I
never heard anything more absorbingly fascinating than his exposition
of the honest and ennobling old doctrine of infant damnation.  If you
knew Macleod you 'd agree with me that he is a man of parts.

"Now that your house is pretty nearly done," said Macleod, "you ought
to take out some insurance in our company, the Bonny Thistle Marine of
Inverness."

"But gracious me!" I cried in astonishment.  "Why should I take out any
marine insurance on a _house_?"

"For the very best reason in the world," answered Mr. Macleod.  "Your
house stands within two hundred yards of one of the fiercest inland
seas of the world.  Even now you can hear the tempestuous billows
dashing wildly upon yonder treacherous sands, and you can see the surf
madly reaching out as if to overwhelm this fair spot with its fatal
fury.  At any time a tidal wave is likely to sweep in from the frowning
shores of Michigan.  Fancy for one moment what would become of this
beautiful but delicate fabric if that mighty lake were to burst its
confines and surge in one vast wall in this direction!  Has not the
immortal Scott truly said:

  "Against the wrath of nature how vain
        the works of man?


"My dear Baker, you certainly are too sensible a man to be blind to the
security which is held out to you in this supreme moment of peril by
the Bonny Thistle Marine of Inverness."

I admit that I knew not what to say.  I had never before suspected any
of these dangers which, according to my friends, now seemed imminent.
On the one hand our cherished new house was threatened by fire; on the
other hand that same dear edifice seemed to be doomed to a watery
grave.  Under these conflicting threatenings what was an inexperienced
man to do?  Heaven be praised, my presence of mind did not desert me.
I referred Mr. Macleod to Alice, as I had referred the others.  It was
her house, and she would have to be responsible for it against the
devouring elements.

That night I dreamed that the awful suggestions of Messrs. Teddy,
Jeems, Doller, and Macleod had been realized.  I dreamed that the new
house was confronted upon one side by a wall of flame, and upon the
other by a wall of water.  Destruction and death seemed imminent.  I
dreamed that, trusting rather the mercy of the waves than the ferocity
of the flames, I leaped into the billows and struggled like a Titan
with them.  I awoke, screaming with affright.




XVI

NEIGHBOR ROBBINS' PLATYPUS

I wish you knew Burr Robbins.  It is quite likely, however, that you
_do_ know him, for he has been conspicuously before the public for a
number of years.  Mr. Robbins lives just across the way from the old
Schmittheimer place, and he has surrounded himself with comforts and
luxuries of a most extraordinary character.  He is a retired circus
proprietor, and he has taken with him into retirement many of the most
startling features of the menagerie which used to figure as one of the
most delectable component parts of the "absolutely greatest
agglomeration of marvels exhibiting under one canvas."

In his front yard Mr. Robbins pastures two trained buffalo, a sacred
cow, a gnu (or horned horse), two musk deer, a giraffe, a woolly horse,
a five-legged calf and a moose.  In the back yard there are two white
bear cubs, a baby elephant, a nest of pythons, half a dozen ostriches,
a learned pig, several alligators and crocodiles, and a giant sloth
from South America.  The stable is well stocked with monkeys, parrots,
eagles, lizards, tortoises and other curiosities, and in the watering
trough are a sea serpent and a mermaid (said to be the only specimens
of these marvels in a domesticated state).

Alice expressed some anxiety at first that the proximity of the strange
creatures might prove unpleasant to us, and she strictly forbade little
Erasmus associating with the pythons or pulling the crocodiles' tails.
Mr. Robbins has assured us, however, that his pets are docile and
trustworthy, and it is his custom to invite the little children of the
neighborhood to visit and play with the most tractable of them.

I got acquainted with neighbor Robbins in a rather curious manner.  His
platypus escaped from its cage in the stable and sought refuge in our
front yard.  I discovered that it had made a nest in one of our lilac
bushes and had laid an egg in it.  With eggs at twenty cents a dozen
and our family fond of custard, an industrious platypus is by no means
an unwelcome visitor.  When Mr. Robbins came looking for his vagrant
pet I suggested that a flock of platypuses would be a decided
improvement upon the poultry with which the average farmer stocks his
farm.  I was considerably surprised to learn from Mr. Robbins that the
market price of platypuses is eight hundred dollars apiece, and I at
once foresaw that this strange creature was not likely to become the
dreaded competitor of the hen in the midst of us.

Erasmus and little Josephine became deeply interested in Mr. Robbins,
and they are now spending a large share of their time in the society
either of that fascinating gentleman or of his equally fascinating wild
beasts.  Erasmus has learned to throw a back-somersault with surprising
ease and grace and to sing a comic song with electrical effect.  These
accomplishments he has acquired under the careful tutelage of Rufe
Botts, formerly known to fame as Professor Botts, manager of the
Nonpareil Congress of Trained Dogs and Trick Ponies.  I understand that
he also served Mr. Robbins in "the palmy days" as a clown in the ring
during the regular performance and as a serio-comic vocalist at the
concert immediately after the show under the great canvas.  Relentless
time, however, rings in wondrous changes, and the whilom Professor
Rufus Botts, pride alike of the amphitheatre and of the concert stage,
is now plain Rufe Botts on a salary of four dollars a week (and found)
as Mr. Robbins' man of all work.

Alice and I have feared that Rufe's influence might not be beneficial
to the children.  It pains us to observe that Josephine has learned to
ride a padded horse and to leap with surprising certainty through a
hoop and over a banner.  Erasmus does not disguise his intention of
joining a circus when he reaches the age of maturity, and I happened to
overhear Rufe remark the other day that our daughter Fanny, with just a
leetle more practice, would make a ne plus ultra snake-charmer and
knife-thrower.  Mr. Robbins has laughed at our solicitude; he tells us
that these are the vagarious fancies and exuberant whims of youth and
that they will duly die out.  This is really very consoling to me, for
I can conceive of nothing else more humiliating than the spectacle of
our beloved Josephine flaunting around a circus ring upon the back of a
fat horse and attired in shockingly scanty raiment.  It would break his
mother's heart if Erasmus were to diverge from that course in theology
which she has mapped out and were to embark in the picturesque
profession of turning somersaults in public.  Our family reputation
would surely be irreparably damaged if our Fanny were to be beguiled
into the fascinating but hazardous arts of a snake-charmer and a
knife-thrower!  Heaven send that our fears be dissipated by future
events!

And yet, full of temptations and of misery as I believe the career of a
circus performer to be, I am entertained and instructed by neighbor
Robbins' recital of his exploits and experiences, and I am deeply
stirred by his narrative of the adventures he had in the capture of
those same wild beasts which now embellish his expansive estate in
Clarendon Avenue.  Indeed, a peculiar interest is now attached by me to
each particular beast, for I have heard Mr. Robbins tell how in their
native jungles or on their native pampas or in their native lagoons or
among their native rocky fastnesses he sought and found and
comprehended the lemurs, the bisons, the alligators, the rackaboars,
and the other marvels of zoölogy.

It is very pleasant, I can assure you, to listen to tales of adventure
while one is engaged at the somewhat prosaic task of trimming a lilac
bush or of weeding the pansy bed.  Whenever he discovers me at this
kind of toil neighbor Robbins comes over and leans up against a tree
and beguiles the tedium of labor with a bit of personal experience.  I
can't begin to tell you how attached I have already become to Mr.
Robbins.  I have already made up my mind that when his own front lawn
gets pretty well cleaned out I shall ask neighbor Robbins to pasture
his sacred cow, horned horse, and five-legged calf in our front yard
for a spell.

I shall never forget the shock I had one afternoon while Mr. Robbins
and I were visiting on our front lawn.  I had been pruning one of the
poplars and Mr. Robbins was telling me of the difficulty Professor
Rufus Botts and he had once had trying to teach the wild man of Borneo
to eat olives and anchovy paste.  Suddenly I saw a strange object pass
up the street on a bicycle.  I had never seen the like before.  My
acquaintance with Burr Robbins' menagerie had made me familiar with
most of the curious forms of animal life, but never before had I seen
so remarkable an object as I beheld upon that bicycle.

"Look there!  Look quick!" said I to neighbor Robbins.  "It is going up
the street and it has wheels under it!"

"Where?" asked Mr. Robbins; "I don't see anything."

"Yes, you do," said I; "I mean the queer thing on the bicycle--can it
be one of your trained animals that has got away?"

"Bless your soul, man," answered Mr. Robbins, "that's not an animal!
That's a woman!"

"Oh, no, it is n't," said I.  "No woman ever dressed like that."

"No woman ever dressed like that?" echoed Mr. Robbins, with a mocking
laugh; "why, neighbor Baker, where have you been hiding so long that
you 're so behind the times?"

"I 've not been hiding at all," said I, indignantly.  "I 've been
living in Evanston Avenue, and a very worthy locality it is, too!"

"And do you mean to tell me," asked Mr. Robbins, "that women don't ride
the bicycle in Evanston Avenue?"

"Of course they do," said I, "but they don't look like _that_!  The
women that ride in Evanston Avenue wear dresses, the same as other
women wear.  This strange object (which you declare is a woman) wears
pants!"

"Those ain't pants," said Mr. Robbins; "those are bloomers."

"I don't care what you call them," said I, "they 're pants just the
same, and, what is more, very ill-fitting pants at that!"

"That," said Mr. Robbins, "is the new style of bicycle attire for the
feminine sex.  Shocking as it may appear to you, it is much more ample
than the costume which I found to be popular among the female
bicyclists of France during my visit to that country last summer."

"But you don't mean to tell me," said I, "that women make a practice of
riding up and down Clarendon Avenue in pants!"

"Certainly, I do," said Mr. Robbins.  "We do things in style over this
way.  Evanston Avenue is a century behind the times.  Oh, you 'll learn
a lot of things when you get moved over here into your new house."

"But I 'll not stand it!" I cried.  "I 'll inform the police and I 'll
have the law on these brazen creatures.  What would Alice say!  And
what would become of Fanny and of little Josephine if they were brought
up under the demoralizing influences of spectacles like that!  Do you
suppose I 'm going to have Galileo and Herschel corrupted?  And little
Erasmus--shall his pure, innocent mind be contaminated?  Never,
neighbor Robbins, never!"

But Mr. Robbins did not seem to view the matter at all as I did.  It
was evident that his long connection with the circus had calloused the
sensibility of his perceptive faculties.  He was inclined to jeer at
what he termed my prudishness.  I was glad to be back in Evanston
Avenue once more, secure in an atmosphere of propriety.  It was several
hours, however, before I could get my mind away from thoughts of that
woman in pants, so profoundly had her appearance in that strangely
abbreviated costume shocked me.




XVII

OUR DEVICES FOR ECONOMIZING

Unless you want to render yourself liable to an attack of nervous
prostration you should never watch a skilful workman nailing on lath.
It is the most bewildering spectacle you can conceive of.  I watched it
for twenty minutes one day--it was when they were lathing the big front
room downstairs, the library, and my brain began to reel as if I were
intoxicated.  I actually believe that if Uncle Si had not led me away
and set me down under one of the willow-trees in the front yard I
should have had a spell of sickness, and may be even now had been
confined in the incurable ward of a lunatic asylum.  I can't understand
how they do it so accurately and so fast and with such apparent ease.
The whole proceeding is so fascinating that I really believe that, next
to proficiency in the science of astronomy, I should like to be an
expert at nailing lath.  In every line of mechanics my education has
been grievously neglected.

Alice says that I am not practical enough to make a successful
carpenter; she gets this unfair opinion of me from an incident in our
early wedded life which she delights in recalling in the presence of
people upon whom I am particularly desirous of making a favorable
impression.  It seems that when Galileo and Herschel were little tots I
undertook to construct a playhouse for them in the back yard.  This was
at a time when I was exceptionally busied with my professional studies;
Mars was rapidly approaching perihelion, and I had been commissioned by
the Blue Island Society of the Arts and Sciences to prepare a chart of
the bottle-neck seas.  It would have been surprising indeed had I not
been preoccupied--too absorbed in intellectual pursuits to cope
successfully with any such worldly and prosaic thing as a playhouse in
the back yard.  Yet Alice insists that it is most amusing that I should
have neglected to provide that structure with windows and a door, and
that, as a natural consequence, I should have nailed myself up securely
in that affair.

On another occasion I painted myself gradually into a corner while
attempting to paint the floor of the spare chamber.  Alice reproached
me bitterly for this; she said she supposed everybody knew that a floor
should always be painted toward, and not away from the door.  Alice
seems never to consider that few other people are gifted with such
intuitions as she has, but are compelled to drag along through life
learning by experience.

I do not wish to be understood as complaining or railing against fate
because I am not skilled in mechanics; I recognize as a distinct boon
the fact that I am awkward in the use of tools, and the further fact
that I have no ambition in the direction of mechanical endeavor has
doubtless saved me many a bruised thumb and a vast amount of hard
labor.  When I see my neighbors tinkering away at their storm windows
and garbage boxes and grape vine trellises and dog kennels and window
screens and front gates, I do not neglect to thank heaven that Alice
has the best of reasons for not asking me to engage in similar odd jobs
about our house.

Still, I am sure that, if I ever do engage in any avocation, it will be
that of nailing lath, an employment requiring an exercise of patience,
of intelligence, and of skill to the highest degree.

Until we bought the new place I had no idea that the expense of
conducting an establishment of one's own was so large.  It seems,
however, that when one has once become a property-owner there is no end
to the things one must have and cannot get along without.  It is
impossible to say how or where the venders of patent arrangements find
out about you, but no sooner do you buy a place of your own than you
are run to death by people who actually prove to you that you _must_
have what they have to sell.

Alice and I are very happy in the confidence that we have secured a
simple device which is going to reduce our coal bill by at least fifty
per cent.; it is a fuel-saving machine which is to be attached to our
new steam-heating apparatus, and if it accomplishes anything like what
the agent said it would, why, it is worth five dollars ten times over!
And we are expecting wonders, too, of the gas-saving apparatus for
which we have paid three dollars and which is to be attached to the
meter with such pleasing results that we shall have five times more
light at a saving of at least sixty per cent in cost.

I find upon consulting my expense account for May that during that
month alone Alice and I purchased no fewer than thirty devices of an
economical character.  We have three different kinds of
smoke-consumers, an automatic carpet-sweeper, a bottle of lightning
polish for plate-glass, a dish-washing machine, a knife-scourer, a
potato-parer, two automatic lawn-hose reels, a sewer-gas consumer, a
patent ashes-sifter, etc., etc.  It has required a considerable outlay
of money to get stocked up with these things, but we regard them as a
very wise investment.  It is wholly consistent with our policy of
economy to provide ourselves with the means of making a marked
reduction in our expenses.  We flatter ourselves that before we have
been in our house six months we shall have demonstrated that we are not
upon earth for the purpose of enriching gas companies and other
soulless corporations.

But I think the wisest investment we have made is the insurance policy
which we have taken out on Alice's life.  The incident came about so
curiously that I feel inclined to tell it in detail.  I was one evening
sitting out in front of our house--the rented one, I mean--watching the
stars gradually making their appearance in the cerulean vault, and I
was marvelling at the endless wonders of the heavenly expanse, when I
became aware that somebody was approaching.  I saw that this somebody
was my Sheridan Road friend and neighbor, Treese Smith.  He was
whistling softly to himself an air which I did not recognize, but which
my daughter Fanny (who is a music connoisseur) identified as "My Pearl
Is a Bowery Girl."  Presuming that he was coming to pay me a neighborly
call, I arose to meet him.  Fancy my amazement when upon beholding me
Mr. Smith burst into tears.  I do not remember ever to have been more
astounded than by this sudden transition from gayety to grief.  I could
hardly find words to ask my friend what trouble had befallen him.

"I was hoping to meet no one," he sobbed, "for I am in no condition of
mind to associate with my fellow-beings."

"It is evident," I interposed, "that some great sorrow has come upon
you; surely you would not hesitate to come to me for sympathy."

"You are right," said Mr. Smith, making a heroic effort to gather
himself together.  "It would be selfish of me not to give so dear a
neighbor as you a chance to share my misery.  Read this."

He handed me a bit of printed stuff which he had evidently cut from a
newspaper.  I stood under the street lamp and read it in this wise:


KANSAS CITY, May 23.--During the thunder-storm to-day Mrs. Bolivar
Bowers, wife of the well-known scientist, was struck and destroyed by
lightning.  Deceased leaves a husband and five children; no insurance.


"Ah, I see," said I in my gentlest tone; "she was a dear
friend--perhaps a relative of yours."

"No, not that," said Mr. Smith, still sobbing; "you misinterpret my
grief.  This party was in no way akin to me except under that common
descent from the old Adam which makes all humanity brothers and
sisters.  I did not know deceased, nor did I ever see her."

"Then why," I asked, in some astonishment, "why are you so moved by the
news of her death?"

"To one of my nature," exclaimed Mr. Smith, "the circumstances detailed
in this item are most painful to contemplate.  We find here recorded
the sudden demise of the sole support of a husband and five children--a
wife and mother snatched away by death, leaving a helpless family
without any visible means of support."

"But why without any means of support?" I asked.

"It says so," answered Mr. Smith.  "The husband is a scientist and is
therefore by nature and by occupation disqualified for earning a
livelihood."

"Surely enough," said I, "that is quite true."

"Can you picture a more distressing scene," continued Mr. Smith, still
in tears, "than that of this helpless father and his five little ones
standing above that lifeless lady and wondering where their food and
raiment will come from now?  It is sad, it is agonizing, it is awful!
And yet it all might have been averted--all this solicitude about the
future.  Had Mrs. Bolivar Bowers taken out a policy in my company, the
International Mutual Tontine Life Insurance Company of Paw Paw,
Indiana, the aspect to-day would have been different, and Bolivar
Bowers and his callow brood of little Bowerses would have reason to
bless the rod that smote them.  Ah, friend Baker, the International
Mutual Tontine has done a glorious work toward mitigating the wrath of
the grim destroyer; under the grace of its soothing balm bereavement
becomes an actual pleasure, death loses its sting, and the grave its
victory."

From this small, casual beginning followed that train of explanation
and argument upon Mr. Smith's part which led to Alice's taking out a
life policy in the Indiana company.  Mr. Smith is a man of broad and
deep human sympathies.  Had he not happened upon that newspaper item,
had his heart not gone out in passionate sympathy toward the bereaved
Bolivar Bowers and his little ones, had he not wandered in an
irresponsible paroxysm of grief in the direction of my house that
evening, and had he not confided his sorrow to me--why, then we should
not have known of the greatest of human benefactors, and Alice would
not now be safe (so to speak) in the bosom of the International Mutual
Tontine Life Insurance Company of Paw Paw.

I do not regard these things as accidental; they are special
providences.




XVIII

I STATE MY VIEWS ON TAXATION

Of the many friends who hastened to congratulate us when they heard
that we had acquired a home, none was more delighted than Gamlin
Harland.  I take it for granted that you have read Mr. Harland's
numerous books, and that you know all about Mr. Harland himself.  Not
to know of him is to argue one's self unknown.

My first meeting with Mr. Harland was at a single-tax convention six
years ago; he was a delegate to that convention from Wisconsin, and I
was a delegate from Illinois.  I was a delegate because the manager of
the party, who lives in New York, could n't find anybody else to serve
as the delegate from the congressional district in which I lived.  I
thought that rather than have that district unrepresented I ought to
serve, and so I did.  The acquaintance I then made with Gamlin Harland
soon ripened into friendship, and this intimacy has lasted ever since.
Mr. Harland insists that I am a single-tax man, and it may be that I am
in theory, although I certainly am not in practice; for I never have
paid any tax of any kind, be it single or double.

As soon as he heard of our purchase Mr. Harland came out to inspect the
premises, and of course he was delighted.

"This will make a new man of you," said he to me.  "It will take your
mind off your impracticable star-gazing and moonshining, and divert
your attention into the channels of realism.  These premises are so
spacious as to admit of your engaging to a considerable extent in
agriculture; you can now lay aside the telescope and the spectrum for
the spade and the hoe; the field of speculation can be abandoned for
this noble acre which I hope soon to see smiling into an abundant
harvest."

"Yes," said I, "it is my purpose to engage largely in the cultivation
of flowers."

"Pshaw!" cried Mr. Harland, "there you go again!  Don't you know that
flowers are wholly worthless except in so far as they pander to the
gratification of a sensuous appetite?  It would be a crime to surrender
these opportunities to ignoble uses.  You must raise vegetables here,
or perhaps some of the small fruits would thrive better in this rich
sandy soil."

Investigation satisfied Mr. Harland that blackberries were _the_
particular kind of small fruit to which the soil seemed adapted.  I was
not surprised at this, for I knew that the blackberry was a favorite
with Mr. Harland--in fact, Mr. Harland is the only author I know of who
has written a novel whose plot hinges (so to speak) upon a blackberry.
So passionately fond of this fruit is he that he devotes a part of the
year to cultivating blackberries on his Wisconsin farm.  There are
invidious persons who intimate that his only reason for cultivating the
blackberry is to be found in the fact that nothing else will grow on
his farm, and presumably you have heard the epigram which the
romanticists have perpetrated at Mr. Harland's expense, and which
represents that ambitious and aggressive gentleman as raising
blackberries in summer and ---- in winter.

After getting me thoroughly inoculated with the blackberry idea, and
having duly impressed me with his theory that true manhood consisted of
making one's self unspeakably miserable and sweaty with a shovel and a
hoe, Mr. Harland broached his favorite topic, and ventured the
assertion that now that I was the possessor of taxable property I would
become as rabid a single-tax advocate as Henry George himself.  I
answered that I already advocated a single-tax system, for the reason
that if we could only once get a single-tax system in vogue we should
then be but one remove from no taxation at all, and would have less
difficulty in securing that desirable end ultimately.

The truth of the matter is, I object to taxation only in so far as it
affects me.  I have no objection to other folk being taxed, but I do
not fancy being taxed myself.  I agree with Brother Harland that there
is palpable injustice in making an industrious and public-spirited man
pay for the so-called privilege of building himself a home; he pays the
carpenters and masons and painters for making that home, and he is then
expected to pay the city and the State for having invested his hard
earnings in a permanent enterprise which gives employment to the
laborer, which beautifies the neighborhood, and which enhances the
value of the adjacent property.  The object of taxation (as Mr. Harland
asserts and as I believe) is to enrich the office-holding class, a
class of loose morality, utterly heartless and utterly conscienceless,
and I agree with Mr. Harland in the opinion that the time is not far
distant when the honest people of this country will arise as one man
and subvert the corrupt hand of politics which is now grinding us under
the iron heel of oppression.

It is seldom that I give expression to my views upon this subject, for
the reason that I fear they may be misinterpreted.  I have always had
an apprehension that I would be mistaken for an anarchist, which I am
not; I am an advocate of peace and of the laws; I do not believe in
violence of any kind.

And now that I am speaking of violence, I am reminded of an incident
which illustrates the thoughtless cruelty of too many of our youth.  It
was scarcely two weeks ago that I detected a boy (apparently about
twelve years of age) climbing one of the willow trees in our old
Schmittheimer place.  I crept up on him unawares and speedily became
satisfied that he was after the eggs in a bird's nest that nestled
cozily in a crotch of the limbs.  I shouted lustily at the young
scapegrace, and his confusion convinced me that my suspicions were
correct.  I kept him in his uncomfortable position in the tree until I
had lectured him severely for the cruelty he contemplated and until I
had exacted from him a promise that he would forever thereafter abstain
from the practice of robbing birds' nests.  The tears which trickled
down his face assured me no less than his solemn protests did that the
lad was indeed penitent, but the fellow had no sooner descended from
the tree and reached a point of safety the other side of the fence than
he gave utterance to sentiments which wholly disabused my mind of all
faith in his previous professions of reform.

I have never been able to understand what pleasure can accrue from the
spoliation of the homes of birds, the beautiful musical creatures that
contribute so largely toward making the world cheerful.  One of the
pleasantest recollections of my boyhood is that in all that active
period I never once killed or wounded a bird or robbed its nest.  And I
think that the kindest act I ever did--at least the one which I recall
with the most satisfaction--was my release of a caged bird.  A
careless, heedless neighbor had caught and caged a redbird, and the
mournful twittering of the poor creature as he fluttered incessantly
behind the bars of his prison pained and haunted me.  The redbird can
never be reconciled to confinement; he is of the forest; the wildness
of his peculiar note indicates the restlessness of his nature.  So for
nearly a year the melancholy twittering and the fluttering of that
caged bird haunted me.

One morning--it was in the gracious May time--I awoke early.  The sun
was just coming up and was kissing the tears from lovely Nature's face.
The air was full of coolness and of sweet smells.  Then, hearing the
querulous note of the imprisoned bird upon the porch yonder, I
determined to set the poor thing free.  So I dressed myself and stole
out into the graciousness of the early morning.  To my last day I shall
not forget the delight, the rapture, with which that released bird
mounted from the doorway of his cage and sped away!

One of the most treasured relics I have is a poem which my father wrote
when I was a little boy.  My father was a native of Maine, but for all
that he was a man of sentiment and he had much literary taste, and
ability, too.  The poem which he gave me, and which I have always
treasured, will (if I am not grievously in error) touch a responsive
chord in many a human heart, for all humanity looks back with
tenderness to the time of youth.


  THE MORNING BIRD

  A bird sat in the maple tree
  And this was the song he sang to me:
  "O little boy, awake, arise!
  The sun is high in the morning skies;
  The brook's a-play in the pasture lot
    And wondereth that the little boy
  It loveth dearly cometh not
    To share its turbulence and joy;
  The grass hath kisses cool and sweet
  For truant little brown bare feet--
  So come, O child, awake, arise!
  The sun is high in the morning skies!"

  So from the yonder maple tree
  The bird kept singing unto me;
  But that was very long ago--
  I did not think--I did not know--
  Else would I not have longer slept
    And dreamt the precious hours away;
  Else would I from my bed have leapt
    To greet another happy day--
  A day, untouched of care and ruth,
  With sweet companionship of youth--
  The dear old friends which you and I
  Knew in the happy years gone by!

  Still in the maple can be heard
  The music of the morning bird,
  And still the song is of the day
  That runneth o'er with childish play;
  Still of each pleasant old-time place
    And of the old-time friends I knew--
  The pool where hid the furtive dace,
    The lot the brook went scampering through;
  The mill, the lane, the bellflower tree
  That used to love to shelter me--
  And all those others I knew _then_,
  But which I cannot know again!

  Alas! from yonder maple tree
  The morning bird sings not to me;
  Else would his ghostly voice prolong
  An evening, not a morning, song
  And he would tell of each dear spot
    I knew so well and cherished then,
  As all forgetting, not forgot
    By him who would be young again!
  O child, the voice from yonder tree
  Calleth to _you_, and not to _me_;
  So wake and know those friendships all
  I would to God I could recall!




XIX

OTHER PEOPLE'S DOGS

When I discovered one morning that my young sunflowers and my tomato
vines had been cut down during the night by some lawless depredator I
was mightily incensed.  I had not supposed that there was anybody so
mean as to commit such a wanton destruction.  The value of the property
destroyed was not large; I had paid but five cents apiece for the
twenty tomato vines, and the young sunflowers were a present from Fadda
Pierce.  The intrinsic value of these things was so small as to cut no
figure in my mind, but having watched the graceful creatures wax large
and comely from mere sprouts it was quite natural that I should have a
strong sentimental attachment for them.  For the fruit of the tomato
vine I care nothing, but I had with much satisfaction pictured the
enjoyment which Alice and the children would derive from the luscious
tomatoes which I flattered myself were to ripen upon our own vines
under the genial August sun.

Moreover, I had already made up a list of the names of city friends to
whom I intended to send handsome specimens of these first fruits of my
experiments in farming; the Reillys, the Lynches, the Chapins, the
Maxwells, the Scotts, the Fayes, the Deweys, the Morrises, the
Millards, the Larneds, the Fletchers, the Ways--these and other
fortunate cronies were to be made recipients of my bounty in case the
fruit held out.  I will say nothing of the pleasing future I depicted
for the sunflowers; the sunflower is a particular favorite of mine,
presumably because it is one of the very few flowers I am capable of
identifying.

My impulse, when beholding the tomato vines and sunflowers cut down in
the innocence of youth, was to determine not to pursue gardening
further.  To this mood succeeded a fit of anger, and I was so outraged
by the destruction I beheld that I would cheerfully have given any sum
of money I could have borrowed of my neighbors for information leading
to the apprehension of the perpetrator of this brutal wrong.

As it was, I wrote out an offer of five dollars reward upon a sheet of
letter paper 

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