ing, being in
clumsy-fingered haste to get to a train, I summarily dropped my bonnet
into the wash-bowl. This was not a very dry joke, but having mopped up
the article as well as possible, I put it on and departed with usual
hilarity,--still remembering what it was to have the kindest fortune in
the world, and that one should not expect so rare a life as mine without
an occasional disaster.

But none need undertake a plan of this sort on the theology of Widow
Bedott's hymn, "K. K., Kant Kalkerlate"; for in this song of life on six
feet by thirteen, calculation is the sole rhyme for salvation. We have
heard of dying by inches: this is living by inches. If there be not
floor-room, then perhaps there is wall-room, and every possible article
must be made to hang, from the boot-bag and umbrella behind the curtain
to the pretty market-basket, so toy-like, in the corner. Indeed, it is
the chief charm of a camp-stool chair that this too, when off duty, may
be hung upon the wall, like a hunter's saddle when the chase is ended.
Only see that all the screws are in stoutly, so that in some
entertaining hour various items of your wardrobe or adornments do not
bring their owner to sudden grief.

As might be anticipated, it was rather a struggle to get condensed; and
afterward, too, there were fleeting phases of feeling about it all. For
at times it is not pleasant to connect the day of the week chiefly with
its being the day to clean one's cupboard or lamp-chimney. Often, too,
during a very nice breakfast, one is ready to vow that she will never do
otherwise than board herself; and while despatching the work after,
equally ready to vow that she will take flight from this as soon as
possible. Sometimes, also, one gets a little too much of herself, and an
overdose in this direction is about as bad as most insufferable things.
But then there must be seasons of discouragement in everything. They
inhere to all human enterprises, just as measles and whooping-cough to
childhood. It is well to remember as they pass how rarely it is that
they prove fatal.

And wherefore discouraged, indeed? Is it not the charm of life that
nothing is final,--not even death itself? In this strange existence,
with its great and rapid transitions, happy events are always imminent.
One may be performing her own menialities to-day, and to-morrow, in an
ambassador's carriage, be folded in a fur robe with couchant lions upon
it; to-day be quartered in a single at