once aggregate and specialize, it is a putting into the common
stock that which must be distinct and real that it may be put in at
all. It was not money and goods alone, that the early Christians had
in common.

Instead of a part of their house being foreign and
distasteful,--tolerated through necessity only, that the rest might
be ministered to,--there was a region in it, now, of new, extended
family pleasure. "It was as good as building out a conservatory, or
a billiard-room," Asenath said. "It was just so much more to enjoy."

There was a little old rocking-chair, railed round till it was
almost like a basket, with just a break in the front palings to sit
into. It had a soft down cushion, covered with a damask patterned
patch of wild and divaricating device; and its rockers were short,
giving a jerk and thud if you leaned to and fro in it, like the trot
an old nurse gives a child in an ordinary, four-legged,
impracticable seat. All the better for that; the rockers were not in
the way; and all Aunt Blin had wanted of it as a sewing chair, was
to tip conveniently, as she might wish to bend and reach, to pick up
scissors or spool, or draw to herself any of those surroundings of
part, pattern, or material, which are sure, at the moment one wants
them to be on the opposite side of the table.

Bel brought this away from Leicester Place, and had it in the
kitchen. Mrs. Scherman, then seeing that there remained for Kate
only the choice of the four wooden chairs, and pleased with the cosy
expression they were causing to pervade their precincts, suggested
their making space for a short, broad lounge that she would spare to
them from an upper room which was hardly ever used. It was an old
one that she had had sent from home among some other things that
were reminiscences, when her father and mother, the second year
after her marriage, had broken up their household in New York, and
resolved on a holiday, late in life, in Europe. It was a
comfortable, shabby old thing, that she had used to curl up on to
learn her German, with the black kitten in her lap, and the tip of
its tail for a pointer. She had always meant to cover it new, but
had never had time. There was a large gray travelling shawl folded
over it now, making extra padding for back and seat, and the thick
fringe fell below, a garnishing along the front.

"Let it be," said Asenath. "I don't think you'll set the soup-kettle
or the roasting-pan down on it; and you ca