sed to be. I was very fond of the boys, and cherished no
objection to their privileges in the house. But when one went down, on
a cold day, to the register, to write one's chapter on the nature of
amusements in the life to come, and found the dining-room neatly
laid out in the form of a church congregation, to which a certain
proportion of brothers were enthusiastically performing the duties of
an active pastor and parish, the environment was a definite check to
inspiration.

I wonder if all Andover boys played at preaching? It certainly was the
one sport in our house which never satiated.

Coming in one day, I remember, struggling with certain hopeless
purposes of my own, for an afternoon's work, I found the dining-room
chairs all nicely set in the order of pews; a table, ornamented
with Bible and hymn-books, confronted them; behind it, on a cricket,
towered the bigger brother, loudly holding forth. The little brother
represented the audience--it was usually the little one who was forced
to play this duller _role_--and, with open mouth, and with wriggling
feet turned in on the rounds of the chair, absorbed as much
exhortation as he could suffer.

"My text, brethren," said the little minister, "is, 'Suffer the little
children to come unto me.'

"My subject is, _God; Joseph; and Moses in the bulrushes_!"

Discouraged by the alarming breadth of the little preacher's topic, I
fled up-stairs again. There an inspiration did, indeed, strike me;
for I remembered an old fur cape, or _pelisse_, of my mother's, out
of fashion, but the warmer for that; and straightway I got me into it,
and curled up, with my papers, on the chilly bed in the cold room, and
went to work.

It seems to me that a good part of "The Gates Ajar" was written in
that old fur cape. Often I stole up into the attic, or into some
unfrequented closet, to escape the noise of the house, while at work.
I remember, too, writing sometimes in the barn, on the haymow. The
book extended over a wide domestic topography.

I hasten to say that no person was to blame for inconveniences of
whose existence I had never complained. Doubtless something would have
been done to relieve them had I asked for it; or if the idea that my
work could ever be of any consequence had occurred to any of us. Why
should it? The girl who is never "domestic" is trial enough at her
best. She cannot cook; she will not sew. She washes dishes Mondays and
Tuesdays under protest, while the nu