rt little boy, surrounded by his equally pert mates, said, after
coming uninvited to look over my assortment: "Got most everything,
hain't ye? Got a monkey?"

Then his satellites all giggled.

"No, not yet. Will not <i>you</i> come in?"

Second giggle, less hearty.

A superannuated clergyman walked three miles and a quarter in a heavy
rain, minus umbrella, to bring me a large and common pitcher, badly
cracked and of no original value; heard I was collecting old china.
Then, after making a long call, drew out a tiny package from his vest
pocket and offered for sale two time-worn cheap rings taken from his
mother's dead hand. They were mere ghosts of rings that had once meant
so much of joy or sorrow, pathetic souvenirs, one would think, to a
loving son. He would also sell me his late father's old sermons for a
good sum!

This reminded me of Sydney Smith's remark to an old lady who was sorely
afflicted with insomnia: "Have you ever tried one of my sermons?"

Perhaps I have said enough to prove that life in a bucolic solitude may
be something more varied than is generally--don't let that old peddler
come into the house, say we want nothing, and then tell the ladies I'll
be down directly--and, O <i>Ellen</i>, call Tom! Those ducks are devouring
his new cabbage-plants and one of the calves has got over the stone wall
and--what?

"He's gone to Dog Corner for the cow-doctor."

--Yes, more varied than is generally supposed!

CHAPTER VIII.

THE PROSE OF NEW ENGLAND FARM LIFE

A life whose parlors have always been closed.

IK MARVEL.

Sunshine is tabooed in the front room of the house. The "damp
dignity" of the best-room has been well described: "Musty smells,
stiffness, angles, absence of sunlight. What is there to talk about
in a room dark as the Domdaniel, except where one crack in a
reluctant shutter reveals a stand of wax flowers under glass, and a
dimly descried hostess who evidently waits only your departure to
extinguish that solitary ray?"

At a recent auction I obtained twenty-one volumes of State Agricultural
Reports for seventeen cents; and what I read in them of the Advantages
of Rural Pursuits, The Dignity of Labor, The Relation of Agriculture to
Longevity and to Nations, and, above all, of the Golden Egg, seem
decidedly florid, unpractical, misleading, and very little permanent
popularity can be gained by such self-interested buncombe from these
eloqu