The logs crackled and sparkled
on the hearth, the lamp burnt clear and bright; there was a low singing
sound in the chimney; the elderly aunt nodded and worked in her arm-chair,
and woke up and mixed fresh spirits and water, and went off to sleep
again; and still Harry would sit and smoke and sip and talk. By-and-by the
aunt would wish the visitor good-night, draw up the clock, and depart,
after mixing fresh tumblers and casting more logs upon the fire, for well
she knew her nephew's ways. Harry was no tippler, he never got
intoxicated; but he would sit and smoke and sip and talk with a friend,
and tell him all about it till the white daylight came peeping through the
chinks in the shutters.

Old Harry Hodson, then, made the money, and put two of his sons in large
farms, and paid all their expenses, so that they started fair, besides
leaving his own farm to the third. Old Harry Hodson made the money, yet he
could not have done it had he not married the exact woman. Women have made
the fortunes of Emperors by their advice and assistance, and the greatest
men the world has seen have owned that their success was owing to feminine
counsel. In like manner a woman made the policy of an obscure farmer a
success. When the old gentleman began to get well to do, and when he found
his teeth not so strong as of yore, and his palate less able to face the
coarse, fat, yellowy bacon that then formed the staple of the household
fare, he actually ventured so far as to have one joint of butcher's meat,
generally a leg of mutton, once a week. It was cooked for Sunday, and, so
far as that kind of meat was concerned, lasted till the next Sunday. But
his wife met this extravagant innovation with furious opposition. It was
sheer waste; it was something almost unpardonably prodigal. They had eaten
bacon all their lives, often bacon with the bristles thick upon it, and to
throw away money like this was positively wicked. However, the-old
gentleman, being stubborn as a horse-nail, persisted; the wife, still
grumbling, calmed down; and the one joint of meat became an institution.
Harry, the younger, still kept it up; but it had lost its significance in
his day, for he had a fowl or two in the week, and a hare or a partridge,
and, besides, had the choicest hams.

Now, this dispute between the old gentleman and his wife--this dispute as
to which should be most parsimonious--was typical of their whole course of
life. If one saved cheese-parings, th