,
The light, aerial gallery, golden railed,
Burn like a fringe of fire

on some remote palace of the city. These and other sensations of
malarial fever occupied me for a while. In half dreams I then enjoyed
the minutest details of life in an old farm-house that had been my
home, or walked through a picture-gallery I had once frequented, seeing
each picture strangely perfect and splendidly limned. Light diet and
keeping quiet--which every Westerner knows to be the cure of this
fever--cured me. I came forth looking like a _swairth_, one of those
words marked "obs." in the dictionary--means phantom of a person about
to die. It ought to be revived; so here goes--_swairth_.

Leaden before, my eyes were dross of lead.

I was pale and lank, but things had settled themselves in my mind: I
had gone back to my old ideas of honor and freedom; my mind was made
up.

"Well, Lydia," said I, "you wanted to manage: you were bound to wear
the breeches. As you make your pants, so you must sit in them."

"You awful man!" said she.

"Now I will manage," said I.

"Indeed! Nothing would please me better," said she.

"I will sell our house and all that's in it, and get out of debt," said
I.

"You mean to be one of the lower classes and wear old rags," she
exclaimed.

"We have no class-distinctions but the Saving Class and the Wasting
Class. I shall be of the first class. As to clothes, they are
despicable," I replied.

"People who despise clothes can't get any."

"Well, I've done all I'm going to do toward developing the West, which
consists in getting into debt, as far as I can see."

When an able woman submits she submits completely. Lydia put our house
in order. I filled the streets with dodgers advertising our sale. I
have not been a paragraphist for nothing: the sale was a success. I
paid a part of my debts, and gave notes for the rest that will keep my
future poor. I started in again on the _Times'_ city force. To board I
hate: it's a chicken's life--roosting on a perch, coming down to eat
and then going back to roost. So I got a little domicile in "The
Patch." When the teakettle has begun to spend the evening the new cheap
wallpaper, the whitewash and the soapsuds with which the floor has been
scrubbed emit peculiar odors.

"It smells poor-folksy here," says Lydia.

"All the better!" say I.
--MARY DEAN.

SHORT STUDIES IN THE PICTURESQUE.

Although our American climate, with