ouse looks on the outside like a quiet place. No men are seen
about, front windows are closely shaded, front door locked. Go round to
the back door; nobody seems to be at home. If by chance you do find,
after long bruising of knuckles, that you have roused an inmate, it is
some withered, sad-faced old dame, who is indifferent and hopelessly
deaf, or a bare-footed, stupid urchin, who stares as if you had dropped
from another planet, and a cool "Dunno" is the sole response to all
inquiries.

All seems at a dead standstill. In reality everything and everybody is
going at full speed, transpiring and perspiring to such a degree that,
like a swiftly whirling top, it does not appear to move.

Friends think of me as not living, but simply existing, and marvel that
I can endure such monotony. On the contrary, I live in a constant state
of excitement, hurry, and necessity for immediate action.

The cows were continually getting out of pasture and into the corn; the
pigs, like the chickens, evinced decided preference for the garden. The
horse would break his halter and dart down the street, or, if in
pasture, would leap the barbed-wire fence, at the risk of laming his
legs for life, and dash into a neighbor's yard where children and babies
were sunning on the grass.

Rival butchers and bakers would drive up simultaneously from different
directions and plead for patronage and instant attention.

The vegetables must be gathered and carried to market; every animal was
ravenously hungry at all hours, and didn't hesitate to speak of it. The
magnificent peacock would wander off two miles, choosing the railroad
track for his rambles, and loved to light on Si Evans's barn; then a boy
must be detailed to recover the prize bird, said boy depending on a
reward. His modest-hued consort would seek the deep hedges back of a
distant swamp.

Friends would come from a distance to surprise and cheer me in my lonely
retreat just at the time that the butter must positively be made, while
the flowers were choking for water, smothered with weeds, "pus'ley," of
course, pre-eminent. Then a book agent would appear, blind, but doubly
persistent, with a five-dollar illustrated volume recounting minutely
the Johnstown horror. And one of my dogs would be apt at this crisis to
pursue and slay a chicken or poison himself with fly-paper. Every
laboring man for miles around would come with an air of great importance
to confidentially warn me against every o