the rehearsal of other days. While I was alluding to a circumstance
that occurred between me and one of my Belleville neighbors the children
cried out with stentorian voice, "Tell us about Carlo and the freezer;" and
they kicked the leg of the table, and beat with both hands, and clattered
the knives on the plate, until I was compelled to shout, "Silence! You act
like a band of Arabs! Frank, you had better swallow what you have in your
mouth before you attempt to talk." Order having been gained, I began:

We sat in the country parsonage, on a cold winter day, looking out of our
back window toward the house of a neighbor. She was a model of kindness,
and a most convenient neighbor to have. It was a rule between us that when
either house was in want of anything it should borrow of the other. The
rule worked well for the parsonage, but rather badly for the neighbor,
because on our side of the fence we had just begun to keep house, and
needed to borrow everything, while we had nothing to lend, except a few
sermons, which the neighbor never tried to borrow, from the fact that she
had enough of them on Sundays. There is no danger that your neighbor will
burn a hole in your new brass kettle if you have none to lend. It will
excite no surprise to say that we had an interest in all that happened on
the other side of the parsonage fence, and that any injury inflicted on so
kind a woman would rouse our sympathy.

On the wintry morning of which we speak our neighbor had been making
ice-cream; but there being some defect in the machinery, the cream had not
sufficiently congealed, and so she set the can of the freezer containing
the luxury on her back steps, expecting the cold air would completely
harden it. What was our dismay to see that our dog Carlo, on whose early
education we were expending great care, had taken upon himself the office
of ice-cream inspector, and was actually busy with the freezer! We hoisted
the window and shouted at him, but his mind was so absorbed in his
undertaking he did not stop to listen. Carlo was a greyhound, thin, gaunt
and long-nosed, and he was already making his way on down toward the bottom
of the can. His eyes and all his head had disappeared in the depths of the
freezer. Indeed, he was so far submerged that when he heard us, with quick
and infuriate pace, coming up close behind him, he could not get his head
out, and so started with the encumbrance on his head, in what direction he
knew not. No