it with care before he and his
smaller sister were deported, to be out of the way in the final
storm? Does the o'ermastering pathos of a modest household turned
inside out, its tender vitals displayed to the passing world,
wring their breasts? Stoic men, if so, they well conceal their
pangs.

They have one hopelessly at a disadvantage. In the interval that
always elapses before the arrival of the second van, there is a
little social chat and utterance of reminiscences. There is a
lively snapping of matchheads on thumbnails, and seated at ease
in the debris of the dismantled living room our friends will
tell of the splendour of some households they have moved before.
The thirty-eight barrels of gilt porcelain, the twenty cases of
oil paintings, the satin-wood grand piano that their spines
twinge to recall. Once our furnitures were moved by a crew of
lusty athletes who had previously done the same for Mr. Ivy Lee,
and while we sat in shamed silence we heard the tale of Mr. Lee's
noble possessions. Of what avail would it have been for us to
protest that we love our stuff as much as Mr. Lee did his? No, we
had a horrid impulse to cry apology, and beg them to hurl the
things into the van anyhow, just to end the agony.

This interval of social chat being prolonged by the blizzard, the
talk is likely to take a more ominous turn. We are told how, only
last week, a sister van was hit by a train at a crossing and
carried a hundred yards on the engine pilot. Two of the men were
killed, though one of these lived from eleven o'clock Saturday
morning until eleven o'clock Monday night. How, after hearing
this, can one ask what happened to the furniture, even if one is
indecent enough to think of it? Then one learns of another of the
fleet, stalled in a drift on the way to Harrisburg, and hasn't
been heard from for forty-eight hours. Sitting in subdued
silence, one remembers something about "moving accidents by flood
and field," and thanks fortune that these pitiful oddments are
only going to a storage warehouse, not to be transported thence
until the kindly season of spring.

But packing for storage instead of for moving implies subtler and
more painful anguishes. Here indeed we have a tonic for the soul,
for election must be made among one's belongings: which are to be
stored, and which to accompany? Take the subject of books for
instance. Horrid hesitation: can we subsist for four or five
months on nothing but the "Oxford Book