tic, to-morrow be treading the
tapestries of her own drawing-rooms. Thus the golden Fate turns and
keeps turning; it is only when, through frigidness or fear, we refuse to
revolve with it, that there ensues the discord of despair.

But instead of going to a Walden and camping on the shady edges of the
world, to see what could be done without civilization, I preferred to
camp down in the heart of civilization, and see what could be done with
it;--not to fly the world, but to face it, and give it a new emphasis,
if so it should be; to conjure it a little, and strike out new
combinations of good cheer and good fellowship. In fact, it seems to me
ever that the wild heart of romance and adventure abides no more with
rough, uncouth nature than with humanity and art. To sit under the pines
and watch the squirrels run, or down in the bush-tangles of the
Penobscot and see the Indians row, is to me no more than when Gottschalk
wheels his piano out upon the broad, lone piazza of his house on the
crater's edge, and rolls forth music to the mountains and stars. Here
too are mystery, poesy, and a perpetual horizon.

This for romance; but true adventure abides most where most the forces
of humanity are. So I camped down in the heart of things, surely; for in
the next room were a child, kitten, and canary; in the basement was a
sewing-machine; while across the entry were a piano, flute, and
music-box. But Providence, that ever takes care of its own, did ever
prevent all these from performing at once, or the grand seraglio of
Satan would have been nothing to it.

But if in getting a room one is haunted by the two gentlemen, in getting
furniture and provisions one is afterward haunted by the "family"
relation. It is a result of the youthfulness of our civilization, that
as yet it is cumbrous and unwieldy. We do not yet master it, but are
mastered by it; and nowhere in America will one find the charming
arrangements for single living which have filled the Old World with
delightful haunts for the students of every land. As yet we provide for
people, not persons; and the needs of the single woman are no more
considered in business than in boarding. Forever she is reminded of the
Scripture, "He setteth the solitary in families"; and forever it seems
that all must be set there but herself. For nice crockery is sold by the
set, knives and forks by the half-dozen, the best coal by the half-ton;
the tin-pans are immense, and suggest a family T