uth, I suspect the Master has found out that his
formula does not hold water quite so perfectly as he was thinking, so
long as he kept it to himself, and never thought of imparting it to
anybody else. The very minute a thought is threatened with publicity
it seems to shrink towards mediocrity, as I have noticed that a great
pumpkin, the wonder of a village, seemed to lose at least a third of
its dimensions between the field where it grew and the cattle-show
fair-table, where it took its place with other enormous pumpkins from
other wondering villages. But however that maybe, I shall always regret
that I had not the opportunity of judging for myself how completely the
Master's formula, which, for him, at least, seemed to have solved the
great problem, would have accomplished that desirable end for me.

The Landlady's announcement of her intention to give up keeping boarders
was heard with regret by all who met around her table. The Member of the
Haouse inquired of me whether I could tell him if the Lamb Tahvern was
kept well abaout these times. He knew that members from his place used
to stop there, but he hadn't heerd much abaout it of late years. I had
to inform him that that fold of rural innocence had long ceased offering
its hospitalities to the legislative, flock. He found refuge at last,
I have learned, in a great public house in the northern section of the
city, where, as he said, the folks all went up stairs in a rat-trap,
and the last I heard of him was looking out of his somewhat elevated
attic-window in a northwesterly direction in hopes that he might perhaps
get a sight of the Grand Monadnock, a mountain in New Hampshire which I
have myself seen from the top of Bunker Hill Monument.

The Member of the Haouse seems to have been more in a hurry to find
a new resting-place than the other boarders. By the first of January,
however, our whole company was scattered, never to meet again around the
board where we had been so long together.

The Lady moved to the house where she had passed many of her prosperous
years. It had been occupied by a rich family who had taken it nearly as
it stood, and as the pictures had been dusted regularly, and the books
had never been handled, she found everything in many respects as she had
left it, and in some points improved, for the rich people did not know
what else to do, and so they spent money without stint on their house
and its adornments, by all of which she could not help