-of poverty and pinches. But they sup their
buttermilk, and the bowl is bonny, if it is only a pumpkin rind.
Isn't that rhyme just the perfection of the glorifying of common
things by imagination?"

"It always seems to me that living _might_ be pretty in such places.
All just alike, and snug together. I should think Mrs. Fitzpatrick
and Mrs. Mahoney would have beautiful little ambitions and rivalries
about their tidy parlors and kitchens, setting up housekeeping side
by side, as they do. I should think they might have such nice
neighborliness, back and forth. It looks full of all possible
pleasantness; like the cottage quarters of the army families, down
at Fort Warren, that you see so white and pretty among the trees, as
you go by in the steamboat."

"Only they don't make it out," said Frank Sunderline, "after all.
The prettiest part of it is the going by in the steamboat. Here, I
mean. The 'Mother Goose' idea is very suggestive; but if you went
through that block, from beginning to end, I wonder how many 'bonny
bowls' you would really find, that you'd be willing to breakfast out
of?"

"I wonder how many bonny bowls there'll be, one of these days, in
the cook's closet of the grand house we're going to?" said Ray.

"That's it," said Sunderline. "It's pretty to build, and it's pretty
to look at; but I should like to hear what your mother would say to
the 'conveniences.' One convenience wants another to take care of
it, till there's such a compound interest of them that it takes a
regiment just to man the pumps and pipes, and open and shut the
cupboards. Living doesn't really need so much machinery. But every
household seems to want a little universe of its own, nowadays."

"I suppose they make it wrong side out," said Ray. "I mean all
outside."

Further on, along the bay shores, and across the long bridge, and
reaching over crests of hills that gave beautiful pictures of land
and waterscape, the way was pleasanter and pleasanter. Other and
different homesteads were set along the route, suggesting endless
imaginations of the different character and living of the dwellers.
More than once, either Ray or Frank was on the point of saying, as
they passed some modest, pretty structure, with its field and
garden-piece, its piazza, porch, or balcony, and its sunny
windows,--"There! _that_ is a nice place and way to live!"

But a young man and woman are shy of sharing such imaginations,
before the sharing is quite unders