o manner of means hope to get reconciled
to the accidents, you know. It is climatic, I suppose--an exhilarating
air. I should be attempting all sorts of impossible feats, my sickly
failures would of course get into the papers, and chagrin, dismay
and general discomfort would be my earthly lot. I am not ambitious to
undertake teaching the family to rock the cradle, fry doughnuts, do
the family ironing and coax our stray hens into the coop, all in one
motion. Nor am I impatient to get up in the moonlight with the idea
buzzing in my brain that burglars have arrived, and after putting
two or three pounds of lead into our best cow, to creep back to bed
feeling badly, like a second Alexander, that there's no more glory.
Really, I haven't enterprise enough for Danbury.

Now, there _are_ men who ought to start off at once and move into that
town. A wide-awake, bustling fellow, who craves excitement, who is
never happy unless whirling around like a bobbin with a ten-per-cent.
semi-annual dividend to earn, who is on hand at all the dog-fights,
Irish funerals, runaway teams, tenement fires, razor-strop matinees,
and public convulsions generally,--such a man, if he went well
recommended, would be likely to find, I imagine, constant employment
in the town of Danbury. He might make arrangements to take his meals
on the jump, and would sleep of course with his hat and boots on.
Browne is mercurial. Browne would be happy in Danbury. Till he died.
For a fortnight, say--one brief, glowing, ecstatic fortnight. Fourteen
giddy days would surely finish him. Imagine Browne (him of the eagle
eye) up in the morning, his face washed, hair combed, breakfast taken
aboard, and everything trim and tight for sailing out into the surging
whirlpool of Danbury locals. We see him fold the substantial Mrs. B.
to his manly bosom and discharge a parent's duty toward the little
Brownes. We see him tear himself from the bosom of his family. It is
affecting, as those things usually are.

Browne gains the street, backing out of his gate as he blows a
superfluous kiss to Miss Tilly Browne, his youngest. He lurches,
just as you may expect, into a stout market-woman laden with eggs and
garden vegetables. She careens wildly, and plunges into a baby-cart
that is pushing by. The darling occupant of fourteen months is
smothered in a raw omelet and frescoed over the eye by bunches
of asparagus. The cries of the sweet little cherub would melt the
stoutest heart. The m