Mr. Scribe, I will think of it," replied I, again bowing him
to the door.

Not unvexed by this, for the second time, unexpected response, again
he withdrew, and from my wife, and daughters again burst the old
exclamations.

The truth is, resolved how I would, at the last pinch I and my chimney
could not be parted.

"So Holofernes will have his way, never mind whose heart breaks for
it," said my wife next morning, at breakfast, in that half-didactic,
half-reproachful way of hers, which is harder to bear than her most
energetic assault. Holofernes, too, is with her a pet name for any fell
domestic despot. So, whenever, against her most ambitious innovations,
those which saw me quite across the grain, I, as in the present
instance, stand with however little steadfastness on the defence, she is
sure to call me Holofernes, and ten to one takes the first opportunity
to read aloud, with a suppressed emphasis, of an evening, the first
newspaper paragraph about some tyrannic day-laborer, who, after
being for many years the Caligula of his family, ends by beating his
long-suffering spouse to death, with a garret door wrenched off its
hinges, and then, pitching his little innocents out of the window,
suicidally turns inward towards the broken wall scored with the
butcher's and baker's bills, and so rushes headlong to his dreadful
account.

Nevertheless, for a few days, not a little to my surprise, I heard no
further reproaches. An intense calm pervaded my wife, but beneath which,
as in the sea, there was no knowing what portentous movements might be
going on. She frequently went abroad, and in a direction which I thought
not unsuspicious; namely, in the direction of New Petra, a griffin-like
house of wood and stucco, in the highest style of ornamental art, graced
with four chimneys in the form of erect dragons spouting smoke from
their nostrils; the elegant modern residence of Mr. Scribe, which he had
built for the purpose of a standing advertisement, not more of his taste
as an architect, than his solidity as a master-mason.

At last, smoking my pipe one morning, I heard a rap at the door, and my
wife, with an air unusually quiet for her brought me a note. As I have
no correspondents except Solomon, with whom in his sentiments, at least,
I entirely correspond, the note occasioned me some little surprise,
which was not dismissed upon reading the following:--

NEW PETRA, April 1st.

Sir--During my last examination of your