e and slanted down on the other. I was in despair, until Mrs. W.
brought her intellect to bear upon my difficulties; when it appeared
that three of the uprights were four feet six inches high, and the
fourth was four feet seven inches. How it happened no one could
explain.

"Now, W.," says Mrs. W., "send for the carpenter." I did so. He
came--a rough, totally uncultured man. He could barely write his name
and his clothes were principally suspenders. But that uneducated man
just took these pieces of wood, and knocked them here, and knocked
them there, and, by aid of some disreputable shingle nails, in twenty
minutes had as neat looking a stand made as ever you saw come out of a
cabinet maker's shop. I was abashed and paid him twenty-five cents.
Mrs. W. said nothing, but smiled.

We had some frames, about two feet square, covered with brown paper.
These we placed on the stand and spread out the eggs. I was a little
uneasy about what kind of a hen to get to hatch them, as I could find
nothing in the books on the subject; but Mrs. W. called me my usual
pet name, and said that the first warm day was all the hen needed.
Wonderful woman that! Just as she predicted! In a few days the brown
paper was covered with little dark specks in a state of agitation.
Mrs. W. spoke of them contemptuously as "nasty black worms."

They grew at a prodigious rate. I explained to the children that all
they had to do was to go down to the osage-orange hedge, cut off the
twigs and branches, and feed them to the worms; that in a few weeks
the product would be ready for market, and if the Mills bill didn't
interfere with protection to American industry, the profits would be
large, and should be equally divided between themselves and their
mother. The children were highly elated and were soon discussing what
should be the color of the carriage horses. One wanted black, the
other blue; and the excitement ran so high that parental intervention
became necessary and some spanking ensued. The next morning our early
dreams were disturbed by fearful outcries from the direction of the
front fence. The smallest of the children had tumbled head first into
the osage-orange hedge, and could not get out. Anyone who knows the
infernal, brutal intensity with which the thorns of the osage-orange
sting, can understand the predicament of that child. We extracted her
in a fearfully lacerated condition. She was punctured all over. Having
read in a book entitled "Thre