hat estimable
woman, that she has an "uncle in India" and does not let him quietly
remain there. I feel quite sure that if I had an uncle in Botany Bay, I
should never, never throw him up to Polly in the way mentioned. If
there is any jar in our quiet life, he is the cause of it; all along of
possible "expectations" on the one side calculated to overawe the other
side not having expectations. And yet I know that if her uncle in India
were this night to roll a barrel of "India's golden sands," as I feel
that he any moment may do, into our sitting-room, at Polly's feet, that
charming wife, who is more generous than the month of May, and who has
no thought but for my comfort in two worlds, would straightway make
it over to me, to have and to hold, if I could lift it, forever and
forever. And that makes it more inexplicable that she, being a woman,
will continue to mention him in the way she does.

In a large and general way I regard uncles as not out of place in this
transitory state of existence. They stand for a great many possible
advantages. They are liable to "tip" you at school, they are resources
in vacation, they come grandly in play about the holidays, at which
season mv heart always did warm towards them with lively expectations,
which were often turned into golden solidities; and then there is always
the prospect, sad to a sensitive mind, that uncles are mortal, and, in
their timely taking off, may prove as generous in the will as they
were in the deed. And there is always this redeeming possibility in a
niggardly uncle. Still there must be something wrong in the character of
the uncle per se, or all history would not agree that nepotism is such a
dreadful thing.

But, to return from this unnecessary digression, I am reminded that the
charioteer of the patient year has brought round the holiday time. It
has been a growing year, as most years are. It is very pleasant to see
how the shrubs in our little patch of ground widen and thicken and bloom
at the right time, and to know that the great trees have added a laver
to their trunks. To be sure, our garden,--which I planted under Polly's
directions, with seeds that must have been patented, and I forgot to
buy the right of, for they are mostly still waiting the final
resurrection,--gave evidence that it shared in the misfortune of the
Fall, and was never an Eden from which one would have required to have
been driven. It was the easiest garden to keep the neighbor's