wishers. Here
is the bed-room where we slept off the world's cares, and got up glad as
the lark when the morning sky beckons it upward. Many a time this room has
been full of sleep from door-sill to ceiling. We always did feel grandly
after we had put an eight-hour nap between us and life's perplexities. We
are accustomed to divide our time into two parts: the first to be devoted
to hard, blistering, consuming work, and the rest to be given to the most
jubilant fun; and sleep comes under the last head.

We step into the nursery for a last look. The crib is gone, and the doll
babies and the blockhouses, but the echoes have not yet stopped galloping;
May's laugh, and Edith's glee, and Frank's shout, as he urged the
hobby-horse to its utmost speed, both heels struck into the flanks, till
out of his glass eye the horse seemed to say:

"Do that again, and I will throw you to the other side of the
trundle-bed!" Farewell, old house! It did not suit us exactly, but thank
God for the good times we had in it!

Moving-day is almost gone. It is almost night. Tumble everything into the
new house. Put up the bedsteads. But who has the wrench, and who the
screws? Packed up, are they? In what box? It may be any one of the half
dozen. Ah! now I know in which box you will find it; in the last one you
open! Hungry, are you? No time to talk of food till the crockery is
unpacked. True enough, here they come. That last jolt of the cart finished
the teacups. The jolt before that fractured some of the plates, and Bridget
now drops the rest of them. The Paradise of crockery-merchants is
moving-day. I think, from the results which I see, that they must about the
first of May spend most of their time in praying for success in business.

Seated on the boxes, you take tea, and then down with the carpets. They
must be stretched, and pieced, and pulled, and matched. The whole family
are on their knees at the work, and red in the face, and before the tacks
are driven all the fingers have been hammered once and are taking a second
bruising. Nothing is where you expected to find it. Where is the hammer?
Where are the tacks? Where the hatchet? Where the screw-driver? Where the
nails? Where the window-shades? Where is the slat to that old bedstead?
Where are the rollers to that stand? The sweet-oil has been emptied into
the blackberry-jam. The pickles and the plums have gone out together
a-swimming. The lard and the butter have united as skillfully as t