hat, Aunt Zeruah doesn't sleep for a week beforehand,
getting ready for it, and for a week after, getting things put away;
and then she tells me that, in Sophie's delicate state, it really is
abominable for me to increase her cares, and so I invite fellows to
dine with me at Delmonico's, and then Sophie cries, and Sophie's
mother says it doesn't look respectable for a family man to be dining
at public places; but, hang it, a fellow wants a home somewhere!"

My wife soothed the chafed spirit, and spake comfortably unto him, and
told him that he knew there was the old lounging-chair always ready
for him at our fireside. "And you know," she said, "our things are all
so plain that we are never tempted to mount any guard over them; our
carpets are nothing, and therefore we let the sun fade them, and live
on the sunshine and the flowers."

"That's it," said Bill bitterly. "Carpets fading,--that's Aunt
Zeruah's monomania. These women think that the great object of houses
is to keep out sunshine. What a fool I was when I gloated over the
prospect of our sunny south windows! Why, man, there are three
distinct sets of fortifications against the sunshine in those windows:
first, outside blinds; then solid, folding, inside shutters; and,
lastly, heavy, thick, lined damask curtains, which loop quite down to
the floor. What's the use of my pictures, I desire to know? They are
hung in that room, and it's a regular campaign to get light enough to
see what they are."

"But, at all events, you can light them up with gas in the evening."

"In the evening! Why, do you know my wife never wants to sit there in
the evening? She says she has so much sewing to do that she and Aunt
Zeruah must sit up in the bedroom, because it wouldn't do to bring
work into the parlor. Didn't you know that? Don't you know there
mustn't be such a thing as a bit of real work ever seen in a parlor?
What if some threads should drop on the carpet? Aunt Zeruah would have
to open all the fortifications next day, and search Jerusalem with
candles to find them. No; in the evening the gas is lighted at
half-cock, you know; and if I turn it up, and bring in my newspapers
and spread about me, and pull down some books to read, I can feel the
nervousness through the chamber floor. Aunt Zeruah looks in at eight,
and at a quarter past, and at half past, and at nine, and at ten, to
see if I am done, so that she may fold up the papers and put a book on
them, and lock up the b