m just tired of this house, Fred, and I should like to move
to-morrow. It is pitifully small and disgustingly dirty with dirt that
I can't get rid of, and everything about it is old as the hills. It
has never been the same place since that fall of soot. If I am obliged
to live in it I shall have to, but I am sure that a new, clean house
would add ten years to my life."

"Jehosophat!" I added, startled by this appeal into borrowing the
latest expletive from the vocabulary of my eldest son, at which
Josephine bridled for an instant, thinking that she had detected
blasphemy. When it dawned upon her that the phrase in question was
only one of those hybrid, meaningless objurgations, the use of which
will scarcely justify a lecture, my darling gulped dismally and waited
for me to go on.

I am inclined to think that a gradually evolved tendency of mine not to
go on when I am expected to was what first prompted my wife to dub me a
philosopher. She fancies, dear soul, that she is a loser by this
lately developed proclivity to seek refuge in silence on the occasions
when she or the children sweep down upon me with some hair-lifting
project which craves an immediate decision. But she is in error. It
is true there are times when the sweet onslaught of the sons and
daughters of my house and their mother has brought the old man to terms
on the spot, and wrung from him an immediate permission to do or to
spend; but, on the other hand, Josephine, who in spite of her cunning
is no philosopher, and her offspring little realize how often their
feelings have been saved from laceration by this trick of mine (she
calls it a trick) of saying nothing until I have had time for
reflection. No man is so wise as his wife and children combined, but
it takes him a little while to find it out; and I have discovered that
to chew a matter over and over is the surest way to avoid promulgating
a stern refusal.

So it was in this instance. Had I uttered the words which rose to my
lips, I should have felt obliged to inform Josephine that, her
premature taking off to the contrary notwithstanding, to move into
another house was out of the question and totally unnecessary. How
could I afford to move? Why should we move? The dear old house where
we had passed so many joyous years and which Josephine used to say was
extraordinarily convenient! I remember that I became successively
irate, pathetic, and bumptious in my secret soul. I said to myse