s. I would gormandize on bedrooms,--like Cromwell
resting in a different one every night,--and the empty ones filling with
forlornest of females, provided one need not do the honors at their
table in the morning and hear how they have slept. There should be
alcoves too, with statues; and unexpected niches of rooms crimson with
drapery, "fit to soothe the imagination with privacy"; and oh! perhaps
somewhere a bit of a conservatory and a fountain,--did not Mrs. Stowe
tell us of these too? Here one could dwell snugly as in the petals of a
rose, or expansively as in a banyan-tree, undisturbed alike from
gentlemen in black or women in white, liable only to the elements and to
mortality.

If only this castle were as attainable as that of Thoreau!--which was to
consist of but one room, with one door to enter it, and where "some
should live in the fireplace, some in the recess of a window, and some
on settles,--some at one end of the hall, some at another, and some
aloft on rafters with the spiders if they chose."

But on the _terra firma_ of realities one's trouble is somewhat
mitigated by the fact that, when all is said and done, the
boarding-houses are usually so poor, that, having entered them, one's
effort to get admitted is rather exceeded by one's desire to depart. The
meats are all cooked together with one universal gravy;--beef is pork,
and lamb is pork, each passing round the swinal sin; the vegetables
often seem to know but one common kettle, for turnip is onion, and
squash is onion; while the corn-cake has soda for sugar, and the bread
is sour and drab-colored, much resembling slices of Kossuth hat.

From these facts grew the experiment of becoming housekeeper
extraordinary to myself,--a strait to which many a one is likely to be
driven, unless we are to have something better than can be offered by
the present system of boarding-houses. For since one's castle was not
yet builded outside of the brain, it only took a little Quixotism of
imagination to consider as castles all these four-story brick houses
with placards affixed of "Rooms to be let," and to secure the most
eligible corner in one of these at moderate rent.

This of course is not so easy to do; but at last a _petite_ room seemed
to be struck out from the white heat of luck,--so _petite_!--six feet by
thirteen feet, two carpet-breadths wide and four masculine strides long;
one flight up, and just large enough to sheathe one's self in;
high-walled and co