The House

n (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 t

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

est 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 t

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. Ali

ent 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 p

"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 particul

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

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 exu

n 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 di

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 inve

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 naturall

f 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

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 sp

ved to convince me that there is nothing, either in the heavens above or