ns," yet possessed an
abundance of good business qualifications--spirit, energy, talent and
tact--they were bound to see him through! In short, B----, the great
Portland capitalist, found things about right, and in good time, and in
the best of spirits, started for home, determining, in his own mind, to
give his wife a most pleasant surprise, in apprizing her of the fact
that she was not only the wife of a man with six hundred silver dollars,
and about to move his _institution_--but the better half of a gentleman
on the verge of a new campaign as a Boston business man.

"Lord! how Caroline's eyes will snap!" said B----; "how she'll go in;
for she's had a great desire to live in Boston these five years, but
thinks I'm in debt, and don't begin to believe I've got them six hundred
all hid away down----. But I'll surprise her!"

B---- had hardly turned his corner and got sight of his house, with his
mind fairly sizzling with the pent-up joyful tidings and grand surprise
in store for Mrs. B., when a sudden change came over the spirit of his
dream! As he gazed over the fence, by the now dim twilight of fading
day, he thought--yes, he did see fresh earthy loose stones, barrels of
lime, mortar, and an ominous display of other building and repairing
materials, strewn in the rear of his domicil! The cellar doors--those
wings of the subterranean recesses of his house--which he had cautioned,
earnestly cautioned, the "wife of his bussim" to close, carefully and
securely, were sprawling open, and indeed, the outside of his abode
looked quite dreary and haunted.

"My dear Caroline!" exclaimed B----, rushing into the rear door of his
domestic establishment, to the no small surprise of Mrs. B., who gave a
premature--

"Oh dear! how you frightened me, Fred! Got home?"

"Home? yes! don't you see I have. But, Carrie, didn't I earnestly beg of
you to keep those doors--cellar doors--shut? fastened?"

"Why, how you talk! Bless me! Keep the cellar shut? Why, there's nothing
in the cellar."

"Nothing in the cellar?" fairly howls B----.

"Nothing? Of course there is not," quietly responded the wife; "there is
nothing in the cellar; day before yesterday, our drain and Mrs. A.'s
drain got choked up; she went to the landlord about it; he sent some
men, they examined the drain, and came back to-day with their tools and
things, and went down the cellar."

"_Down the cellar?_" gasped B----, quite tragically.

"Down _the_ cellar!" slowly r