are opening at her three
times a day, like them little young birds that split their heads open so
you can a'most see into their empty stomachs, and one wants this and
another wants that, and provisions is dear and rent is high, and nobody
to look to,--then a sharp word cuts, I tell you, and a hard look goes
right to your heart. I've seen a boarder make a face at what I set
before him, when I had tried to suit him jest as well as I knew how, and
I haven't cared to eat a thing myself all the rest of that day, and I've
laid awake without a wink of sleep all night. And then when you come
down the next morning all the boarders stare at you and wonder what makes
you so low-spirited, and why you don't look as happy and talk as cheerful
as one of them rich ladies that has dinner-parties, where they've nothing
to do but give a few orders, and somebody comes and cooks their dinner,
and somebody else comes and puts flowers on the table, and a lot of men
dressed up like ministers come and wait on everybody, as attentive as
undertakers at a funeral.

And that reminds me to tell you that I'm agoing to live with my daughter.
Her husband's a very nice man, and when he isn't following a corpse, he's
as good company as if he was a member of the city council. My son, he's
agoing into business with the old Doctor he studied with, and he's agoing
to board with me at my daughter's for a while,--I suppose he'll be
getting a wife before long. [This with a pointed look at our young
friend, the Astronomer.]

It is n't but a little while longer that we are going to be together, and
I want to say to you gentlemen, as I mean to say to the others and as I
have said to our two ladies, that I feel more obligated to, you for the
way you 've treated me than I know very well how to put into words.
Boarders sometimes expect too much of the ladies that provides for them.
Some days the meals are better than other days; it can't help being so.
Sometimes the provision-market is n't well supplied, sometimes the fire
in the cooking-stove does n't burn so well as it does other days;
sometimes the cook is n't so lucky as she might be. And there is
boarders who is always laying in wait for the days when the meals is not
quite so good as they commonly be, to pick a quarrel with the one that is
trying to serve them so as that they shall be satisfied. But you've all
been good and kind to me. I suppose I'm not quite so spry and
quick-sighted as I was a dozen y