f us clumsy-footed men
might endeavor to escape from the tangled labyrinth of female wiles.

In short, in less than a year it was all done, without any quarrel,
any noise, any violence,--done, I scarce knew when or how, but with
the utmost deference to my wishes, the most amiable hopes that I would
not put myself out, the most sincere protestations that, if I liked it
better as it was, my goddesses would give up and acquiesce. In fact I
seemed to do it of myself, constrained thereto by what the Emperor
Napoleon has so happily called the logic of events,--that old,
well-known logic by which the man who has once said A must say B, and
he who has said B must say the whole alphabet. In a year we had a
parlor with two lounges in decorous recesses, a fashionable sofa, and
six chairs and a looking-glass, and a grate always shut up, and a hole
in the floor which kept the parlor warm, and great, heavy curtains
that kept out all the light that was not already excluded by the green
shades.

It was as proper and orderly a parlor as those of our most fashionable
neighbors; and when our friends called, we took them stumbling into
its darkened solitude, and opened a faint crack in one of the
window-shades, and came down in our best clothes and talked with them
there. Our old friends rebelled at this, and asked what they had done
to be treated so, and complained so bitterly that gradually we let
them into the secret that there was a great south room, which I had
taken for my study, where we all sat; where the old carpet was down;
where the sun shone in at the great window; where my wife's plants
flourished, and the canary-bird sang, and my wife had her sofa in the
corner, and the old brass andirons glistened, and the wood fire
crackled,--in short, a room to which all the household fairies had
emigrated.

When they once had found that out, it was difficult to get any of them
to sit in our parlor. I had purposely christened the new room my
study, that I might stand on my rights as master of ceremonies there,
though I opened wide arms of welcome to any who chose to come. So,
then, it would often come to pass that, when we were sitting round the
fire in my study of an evening, the girls would say,--

"Come, what do we always stay here for? Why don't we ever sit in the
parlor?"

And then there would be manifested among guests and family friends a
general unwillingness to move.

"Oh, hang it, girls!" would Arthur say; "the parlor is