I had decided to fetch my family to New York.

On November tenth, we found ourselves settled in a small apartment
overlooking Morningside Park, which seemed a very desirable playground
for Mary Isabel.

Relying on my books (which were selling with gratifying persistency) we
permitted ourselves a seven-room apartment with a full-sized kitchen and
a maid--whom we had brought on from West Salem. We even went so far as
to give dinner parties to such of our friends as could be trusted to
overlook our lack of plate, and to remain kindly unobservant of the fact
that Dora, the baby's nurse, doubled as waitress after cooking the
steak.

In this unassuming fashion we fed the Hernes, the Severances, and other
of our most valued friends who devoured the puddings which Zulime
"tossed up," with a gusto highly flattering to her skill, while the
sight of me as baby-tender proved singularly amusing--to some of our
guests. It will be seen that we were not cutting entirely loose from the
principles of economy in which we had been so carefully schooled--our
hospitalities had very distinct (enforced) limits.

Our wedding anniversary came while we were getting settled and my
present to Zulime that year was a set of silver which I had purchased
with the check for an article called "A Pioneer Wife"--the paper which I
had written as a memorial to my mother. In explanation of the fact that
all these silver pieces bore the initials I. G., I said, "You are to
think of them as a gift from my mother. Imagine that I gave them to her
long ago, and that they now come to you, from her, as heirlooms. Let us
call them 'The family silver' and hand them down to Mary Isabel in her
turn."

Zulime, who always rose to a sentiment of this kind, gratefully accepted
this vicarious inheritance and thereafter I was pleased to observe that
whenever Mary Isabel wished to break a plate she invariably reached for
one of her grandmother's solid silver spoons--they were so much more
effective than the plated ones!

Christmas came to us this year with new and tender significance, for
"Santy Claus" (who found us at home in New York, rejoicing in our first
baby) brought to us our first tree, and the conjunction of these happy
events produced in my wife almost perfect happiness. Furthermore, Mary
Isabel achieved her first laugh. I am sure of this fact, for I put it
down in my notebook, with these words, "She has a lovely smile and a
chuckle like her grandmother's. She