s, self-adjusting, self-acting, patent-right,
perfective manner,--and yet, I tell you, Marianne will die of that
house. It will yet be recorded on her tombstone, 'Died of conveniences.'
For myself, what I languish for is a log cabin, with a bed in one
corner, a trundle-bed underneath for the children, a fire-place only six
feet off, a table, four chairs, one kettle, a coffee-pot, and a tin
baker,--that's all. I lived deliciously in an establishment of this kind
last summer, when I was up at Lake Superior; and I am convinced, if I
could move Marianne into it at once, that she would become a healthy and
a happy woman. Her life is smothered out of her with comforts: we have
too many rooms, too many carpets, too many vases and knickknacks, too
much china and silver; she has too many laces and dresses and bonnets;
the children all have too many clothes;--in fact, to put it
Scripturally, our riches are corrupted, our garments are moth-eaten, our
gold and our silver is cankered,--and, in short, Marianne is sick in
bed, and I have come to the agency-office for-distressed-women to take
you out to attend to her.

"The fact is," continued Bob, "that, since our cook married and Alice
went to California, there seems to be no possibility of putting our
domestic cabinet upon any permanent basis. The number of female persons
that have been through our house, and the ravages they have wrought on
it for the last six months, pass belief. I had yesterday a bill of sixty
dollars' plumbing to pay for damages of various kinds which had had to
be repaired in our very convenient water-works; and the blame of each
particular one had been bandied like a shuttlecock among our three
household divinities. Biddy privately assured my wife that Kate was in
the habit of emptying dust-pans of rubbish into the main drain from the
chambers, and washing any little extra bits down through the bowls; and,
in fact, when one of the bathing-room bowls had overflowed so as to
damage the frescoes below, my wife, with great delicacy and precaution,
interrogated Kate as to whether she had followed her instructions in the
care of the water-pipes. Of course she protested the most immaculate
care and circumspection. 'Sure, and she knew how careful one ought to
be, and wasn't of the likes of thim as wouldn't mind what throuble they
made,--like Biddy, who would throw trash and hair in the pipes, and
niver listen to her tellin'; sure, and hadn't she broken the pipes in
th