through the
trees. We learned, like innocent pastoral people of the golden age, to
know the several voices of the cows pastured in the vacant lots, and,
like engine-drivers of the iron age, to distinguish the different
whistles of the locomotives passing on the neighboring railroad....

We played a little at gardening, of course, and planted tomatoes, which
the chickens seemed to like, for they ate them up as fast as they
ripened; and we watched with pride the growth of our Lawton
blackberries, which, after attaining the most stalwart proportions, were
still as bitter as the scrubbiest of their savage brethren, and which,
when by advice left on the vines for a week after they turned black,
were silently gorged by secret and gluttonous flocks of robins and
orioles. As for our grapes, the frost cut them off in the hour of their
triumph.

So, as I have hinted, we were not surprised that Jenny should be willing
to remain with us, and were as little prepared for her desertion as for
any other change of our mortal state. But one day in September she came
to her nominal mistress with tears in her beautiful eyes and
protestations of unexampled devotion upon her tongue, and said that she
was afraid she must leave us. She liked the place, and she never had
worked for any one that was more of a lady, but she had made up her mind
to go into the city. All this, so far, was quite in the manner of
domestics who, in ghost stories, give warning to the occupants of
haunted houses; and Jenny's mistress listened in suspense for the motive
of her desertion, expecting to hear no less than that it was something
which walked up and down the stairs and dragged iron links after it, or
something that came and groaned at the front door, like populace
dissatisfied with a political candidate. But it was in fact nothing of
this kind; simply, there were no lamps upon our street, and Jenny, after
spending Sunday evening with friends in East Charlesbridge, was always
alarmed, on her return, in walking from the horse-car to our door. The
case was hopeless, and Jenny and our household parted with respect and
regret.

We had not before this thought it a grave disadvantage that our street
was unlighted. Our street was not drained nor graded; no municipal cart
ever came to carry away our ashes; there was not a water-butt within
half a mile to save us from fire, nor more than the one-thousandth part
of a policeman to protect us from theft. Yet, as I paid