Halicarnassus
should reappear; but he got on the trail just as I was whisking
up-stairs for the last time, and shouted, astonished,--

"What are you doing?"

"Nothing," I answered, with that well-known accent which says,
"Everything! and I mean to keep doing it."

I have observed, that, in managing parents, husbands, lovers, brothers,
and indeed all classes of inferiors, nothing is so efficacious as to let
them know at the outset that you are going to have your own way. They
may fret a little at first, and interpose a few puny obstacles, but
it will be only a temporary obstruction; whereas, if you parley and
hesitate and suggest, they will but gather courage and strength for a
formidable resistance. It is the first step that costs. Halicarnassus
understood at once from my one small shot that I was in a mood to be let
alone, and he let me alone accordingly.

I remembered he had said that the soil was not mellow enough, and I
determined that my soil should be mellow, to which end I took it up by
handfuls and squeezed it through my fingers, completely pulverizing it.
It was not disagreeable work. Things in their right places are very
seldom disagreeable. A spider on your dress is a horror, but a spider
outdoors is rather interesting. Besides, the loam had a fine, soft feel
that was absolutely pleasant; but a hideous black and yellow reptile
with horns and hoofs, that winked up at me from it, was decidedly
unpleasant and out of place, and I at once concluded that the soil was
sufficiently mellow for my purposes, and smoothed it off directly. Then,
with delighted fingers, in sweeping circles, and fantastic whirls, and
exact triangles, I planted my seeds in generous profusion, determined,
that, if my wilderness did not blossom, it should not be from
niggardliness of seed. But even then my box was full before my basket
was emptied, and I was very reluctantly compelled to bring down from the
garret another box, which had been the property of my great-grandfather.
My great-grandfather was, I regret to say, a barber. I would rather
never have had any. If there is anything in the world besides worth that
I reverence, it is ancestry. My whole life long have I been in search of
a pedigree, and though I ran well at the beginning, I invariably stop
short at the third remove by running my head into a barber's shop. If
he had only been a farmer, now, I should not have minded. There is
something dignified and antique in land, and no