shed away under some projecting shelves
to make room for opening the closet-door (as the under table-cloth
must be taken out first), then the trunk was pushed back to make room
for it to be opened for the upper table-cloth, and, after all, it was
necessary to push the trunk away again to open the closet-door for the
knife-tray. This always consumed a great deal of time.

Now that the china-closet was large enough, everything could find a
place in it.

Agamemnon especially enjoyed the new library. In the old house there
was no separate room for books. The dictionaries were kept upstairs,
which was very inconvenient, and the volumes of the Encyclopaedia could
not be together. There was not room for all in one place. So from A to
P were to be found downstairs, and from Q to Z were scattered in
different rooms upstairs. And the worst of it was, you could never
remember whether from A to P included P. "I always went upstairs after
P," said Agamemnon, "and then always found it downstairs, or else it
was the other way."

Of course, now there were more conveniences for study. With the books
all in one room there would be no time wasted in looking for them.

Mr. Peterkin suggested they should each take a separate language. If
they went abroad this would prove a great convenience. Elizabeth Eliza
could talk French with the Parisians; Agamemnon, German with the
Germans; Solomon John, Italian with the Italians; Mrs. Peterkin,
Spanish in Spain; and perhaps he could himself master all the Eastern
languages and Russian.

Mrs. Peterkin was uncertain about undertaking the Spanish; but all the
family felt very sure they should not go to Spain (as Elizabeth Eliza
dreaded the Inquisition), and Mrs. Peterkin felt more willing.

Still she had quite an objection to going abroad. She had always said
she would not go till a bridge was made across the Atlantic, and she
was sure it did not look like it now.

Agamemnon said there was no knowing. There was something new every
day, and a bridge was surely not harder to invent than a telephone,
for they had bridges in the very earliest days.

Then came up the question of the teachers. Probably these could be
found in Boston. If they could all come the same day three could be
brought out in the carryall. Agamemnon could go in for them, and could
learn a little on the way out and in.

Mr. Peterkin made some inquiries about the Oriental languages. He was
told that Sanscrit was at the root of