ual, the old question," said I,--"'What's to be done with
her?'"

"Well," said Bob, "it's exactly what I've come to talk with mother
about. Since she keeps a distressed women's agency office, I've come
to consult her about Marianne. That woman will die before six months
are out, a victim to high civilization and the Paddies. There we are,
twelve miles out from Boston, in a country villa so convenient that
every part of it might almost do its own work,--everything arranged in
the most convenient, contiguous, self-adjusting, self-acting,
patent-right, perfective manner,--and yet I tell you Marianne will die
of that house. It will yet be recorded on her tombstone, 'Died of
conveniences.' For myself, what I languish for is a log-cabin, with a
bed in one corner, a trundle-bed underneath for the children, a
fireplace only six feet off, a table, four chairs, one kettle, a
coffee-pot, and a tin baker,--that's all. I lived deliciously in an
establishment of this kind last summer, when I was up at Lake
Superior; and I am convinced, if I could move Marianne into it at
once, that she would become a healthy and a happy woman. Her life is
smothered out of her with comforts; we have too many rooms, too many
carpets, too many vases and knick-knacks, too much china and silver;
she has too many laces and dresses and bonnets; the children all have
too many clothes: in fact, to put it scripturally, our riches are
corrupted, our garments are moth-eaten, our gold and our silver is
cankered, and, in short, Marianne is sick in bed, and I have come to
the agency office for distressed women to take you out to attend to
her.

"The fact is," continued Bob, "that since our cook married, and Alice
went to California, there seems to be no possibility of putting our
domestic cabinet upon any permanent basis. The number of female
persons that have been through our house, and the ravages they have
wrought on it for the last six months, pass belief. I had yesterday a
bill of sixty dollars' plumbing to pay for damages of various kinds
which had had to be repaired in our very convenient water-works; and
the blame of each particular one had been bandied like a shuttlecock
among our three household divinities. Biddy privately assured my wife
that Kate was in the habit of emptying dustpans of rubbish into the
main drain from the chambers, and washing any little extra bits down
through the bowls; and, in fact, when one of the bathing-room bowls
had overflow