The House

pentering skill. As for Uncle Si, he must have gathered together a pretty fair general idea of what Alice wanted, for he p

een 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 rathe

orch," 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 Ali

ame 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 b

spected 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

ush 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 t

tery 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 Osg

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 newsp

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

aving 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 thin

onvince 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

unflagging interest to his fellow creatures. I find it very pleasing-the solicitude with which these newly-made acquaintances (the

d 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

ting of the apple-tree agents, the fire-underwriters, the patent pavers and the others, and confessed to them that

en by this troupe-this retinue of unctuous courtiers. In my imaginings I beheld myself deserted and alone, while the vast army of my qu

y than for the purpose of disclosing that which may happily serve as a warning to my fellow-beings. I long ago discovered