lf
stoutly that it was all nonsense, and that by means of a little fresh
paint and new coverings for the dining-room chairs, we should be happy
where we were for another five years.

Cockroaches? Bah! Was there not insect powder?

The married man who knows in his secret soul that he cannot afford to
move and who has made up his mind that nothing on earth shall induce
him to, is terribly morose for the first few weeks after his wife has
unbosomed herself upon the subject. He peruses with a savage frown the
real estate columns of the daily newspapers, while he mutters vicious
sentences such as, "I'll be blessed if I will!" or, "Not if I know
myself, and I think I do!" He observes moodily every house in process
of erection, and scrutinizes those "To Let" with an animosity not quite
consistent with his determination to put his foot down for once and
crush the whole project in the bud. Why is it that he slyly visits
after business hours the outlying section of the city, where the newest
and most desirable residences are offered at fashionable prices? Why
at odd moments does he make rows of figures on available scraps of
paper and on the blotter at his office, and abstractedly compute
interest on various sums at four and a half and five per cent.? Why?
Because the leaven of his wife's threat that her life will be shortened
is working in his bosom and he beholds her in his restless dreams
crushed to death beneath a myriad of waterbugs, all for the lack of an
inch of closet-room. Why? Because he is haunted perpetually by the
countenances of his daughters, on which he reads sorrowfully written
that they are wasting away for lack of the bedchamber apiece promised
them by their mother. Why? Because, in brief, he is a philosopher,
and recognizes that what is to be is to be, and that it is easier to
dam up the waters of the Nile with bulrushes (to adopt an elegant and
well-seasoned exemplar of impossibility) than to check the progress of
maternal pride.

Some four months after Josephine's announcement that she would live ten
years longer elsewhere, I returned home one afternoon with what she
subsequently stigmatized as a sly expression about the corners of my
mouth. I doubt if I did look sly, for I pride myself on my ability to
control my features when it is necessary. However that may be, having
persuaded Josephine to take a walk, I conducted her to the door of a
newly finished house in the fashionable quarter.

"