ificent yellow silk shade served as the
crowning glory to this superb creation.

For a week, perhaps, Alice was abstracted; then she told me that she had
been thinking it all over and had about made up her mind that when we got
our new house she would have the reception-room treated in a delicate
canary shade.

"But why abandon the blue, my dear?" I asked. "I think it would be so
pretty to have the decoration of the room match your turquoise ring."

"That 's just like a man!" said Alice. "Reuben, dear, could you possibly
imagine anything else so perfectly horrid as a yellow lampshade in a blue
room?"

"You are right, sweetheart," said I. "That is something I had never
thought of before. You are right; canary color it shall be, and when we
have moved in I 'll buy you a dear little canary bird in a lovely gold
cage, and we 'll hang it in the front window right over the lamp, so that
everybody can see our treasures from the street and envy our happiness!"

"You dear, sweet boy!" cried Alice, and she reached up and pulled my head
down and kissed her dear, sweet boy on his bald spot. Alice is an angel!

I fear I am wearying you with the prolixity of my narrative. So let me
pass rapidly over the ten years that succeeded to the yellow-lamp epoch.
Ten hard but sweet years! Years full of struggle and hopes, touched with
bereavement and sorrow, but precious years, for troubles, like those we
have had, sanctify human lives. Children came to us, and of these
priceless treasures we lost two. If I thought Alice would ever see these
lines I should not say to you now that from the two great sorrows of
those years my heart has never been and never shall be weaned. I would
not have Alice know this, for it would open afresh the wounds her dear,
tender mother-heart has suffered.

Galileo and Herschel are strapping fellows. They have survived their
juvenile ambitions to be milkmen, policemen, lamp-lighters, butchers,
grocerymen, etc., respectively. Both are now in the manual-training
school. Fanny, Josephine and Erasmus--I have not mentioned them
before,--these are the children that are left to us of those that have
come in the later years. And, my! how they are growing! What changes
have taken place in them and all about us! My affairs have prospered; if
it had n't been for the depression that set in two years ago I should
have had one thousand dollars in bank by this time. My salary has
increased steadily year by y