ppiness! The sea-stones that lie so bright on the shores of youth can
dry so dull in the hand of experience! And yet, as Birdalone's Nannie
once announced, "If you thuck 'em they thay boo-ful!" And I guess it
must be a good deal the same with marriage. You can't even afford to lay
down on your job of loving. The more we ask, the more we must give. I've
just been thinking of those days of my fiercely careless childhood when
my soul used to float out to placid happiness on one piece of
plum-cake--only even then, alas, it floated out like a polar bear on its
iceberg, for as that plum-cake vanished my peace of mind went with it,
madly as I clung to the last crumb. But now that I'm an old married
woman I don't intend to be a Hamlet in petticoats. A good man loves me,
and I love him back. And I intend to keep that love alive.

_Friday the Third_

I have just issued an ultimatum as to pigs. There shall be no more loose
porkers wandering about my dooryard. It's an advertisement of bad
management. And what's more, when I was hanging out my washing this
morning a shote rooted through my basket of white clothes with his dirty
nose, and while I made after him his big brother actually tried to eat
one of my wet table-napkins. And that meant another hour's hard work
before the damage was repaired.

_Saturday the Fourth_

Olie is painting the shack, inside and out, and now you'd never know our
poor little Joseph-coat home. I told Dinky-Dunk if we'd ever put a
chameleon on that shack-wall he'd have died of brain-fag trying to make
good on the color-schemes. So Dinky-Dunk made Olie take a day off and
ply the brush. But the smell of paint made me think of Channel passages,
so off I went with Dinky-Dunk, _a la_ team and buckboard, to the Dixon
Ranch to see about some horses, nearly seventy miles there and back. It
was a glorious autumn day, and a glorious ride, with "Bronk" and
"Tumble-Weed" loping along the double-trail and the air like crystal.

Dinky-Dunk and I sang most of the way. The gophers must have thought we
were mad. My lord and master is incontinently proud of his voice,
especially the chest-tones, but he rather tails behind me on the tune,
plainly not always being sure of himself. We had dinner with the Dixons,
and about three million flies. They gave me the blues, that family, and
especially Mrs. Dixon. She seemed to make prairie-life so ugly and empty
and hardening. Poor, dried-up, sad-eyed soul, she loo