comparatively cheap way. A third method is to apply to
an agent. But none of these plans are worth anything. The proper way
is to know some one who will tell you of a house that will exactly suit
you. Euphemia and I thoroughly investigated this matter, and I know that
what I say is a fact.

We tried all the plans. When we advertised, we had about a dozen
admirable answers, but in these, although everything seemed to suit, the
amount of rent was not named. (None of those in which the rent was named
would do at all.) And when I went to see the owners, or agents of these
suitable houses, they asked much higher rents than those mentioned in
the unavailable answers--and this, notwithstanding the fact that they
always asserted that their terms were either very reasonable or else
greatly reduced on account of the season being advanced. (It was now the
fifteenth of May.)

Euphemia and I once wrote a book,--this was just before we were
married,--in which we told young married people how to go to
housekeeping and how much it would cost them. We knew all about it, for
we had asked several people. Now the prices demanded as yearly rental
for small furnished houses, by the owners and agents of whom I have been
speaking, were, in many cases, more than we had stated a house could be
bought and furnished for!

The advertisements of other people did not serve any better. There was
always something wrong about the houses when we made close inquiries,
and the trouble was generally in regard to the rent. With agents we
had a little better fortune. Euphemia sometimes went with me on my
expeditions to real estate offices, and she remarked that these offices
were always in the basement, or else you had to go up to them in an
elevator. There was nothing between these extremes. And it was a good
deal the same way, she said, with their houses. They were all very low
indeed in price and quality, or else too high.

One trouble was that we wanted a house in a country place, not very far
from the city, and not very far from the railroad station or steamboat
landing. We also wanted the house to be nicely shaded and fully
furnished, and not to be in a malarial neighborhood, or one infested by
mosquitoes.

"If we do go to housekeeping," said Euphemia, "we might as well get a
house to suit us while we are about it. Moving is more expensive than a
fire."

There was one man who offered us a house that almost suited us. It was
near the water, had