at the expense
of another staircase to get up to our bedroom."

"Oh, no, papa," said Jane, innocently; "there are very pretty druggets,
now, for covering stair-carpets, so that they can be used without
hurting them."

"Put one over the old carpet, then," said I, "and our acquaintance will
never know but it is a new one."

All the female senate laughed at this proposal, and said it sounded just
like a man.

"Well," said I, standing up resolutely for my sex, "a man's ideas on
woman's matters may be worth some attention. I flatter myself that an
intelligent, educated man doesn't think upon and observe with interest
any particular subject for years of his life without gaining some ideas
respecting it that are good for something; at all events, I have written
another article for the 'Atlantic,' which I will read to you."

"Well, wait one minute, papa, till we get our work," said the girls,
who, to say the truth, always exhibit a flattering interest in anything
their papa writes, and who have the good taste never to interrupt his
readings with any conversations in an undertone on cross-stitch and
floss-silks, as the manner of some is. Hence the little feminine bustle
of arranging all these matters beforehand. Jane, or Jennie, as I call
her in my good-natured moods, put on a fresh clear stick of hickory, of
that species denominated shag-bark, which is full of most charming
slivers, burning with such a clear flame, and emitting such a delicious
perfume in burning, that I would not change it with the millionnaire who
kept up his fire with cinnamon.

You must know, my dear Mr. Atlantic, and you, my confidential friends of
the reading public, that there is a certain magic or spiritualism which
I have the knack of in regard to these mine articles, in virtue of which
my wife and daughters never hear or see the little personalities
respecting _them_ which form parts of my papers. By a particular
arrangement which I have made with the elves of the inkstand and the
familiar spirits of the quill, a sort of glamour falls on their eyes
and ears when I am reading, or when they read the parts personal to
themselves; otherwise their sense of feminine propriety would be shocked
at the free way in which they and their most internal affairs are
confidentially spoken of between me and you, O loving readers.

Thus, in an undertone, I tell you that my little Jennie, as she is
zealously and systematically arranging the fire, and trimly whis