*

On Carving Duck.--It is singular that I can never get so much off the
breast as other people do.

Perhaps I have it set on wrong side up.

* * * * *

I wonder why they never have catalogues for libraries arranged from the
last letter of the name instead of the first.

There is our Italian teacher whose name ends with a "j," which I should
remember much easier than the first letter, being so odd.

* * * * *

I cannot understand why a man should want to marry his wife's deceased
sister. If she is dead, indeed, how can he? And if he has a wife, how
wrong! I am very glad there is a law against it.

* * * * *

It is well, in prosperity, to be brought up as though you were living in
adversity; then, if you have to go back to adversity, it is all the
same.

On the other hand, it might be as well, in adversity, to act as though
you were living in prosperity; otherwise, you would seem to lose the
prosperity either way.

* * * * *

Solomon John has invented a new extinguisher. It is to represent a Turk
smoking a pipe, which is to be hollow, and lets the smoke out. A very
pretty idea!

* * * * *

A bee came stumbling into my room this morning, as it has done every
spring since we moved here,--perhaps not the same bee. I think there
must have been a family bee-line across this place before ever a house
was built here, and the bees are trying for it every year.

Perhaps we ought to cut a window opposite.

There's room enough in the world for me and thee; go thou and trouble
some one else,--as the man said when he put the fly out of the window.

* * * * *

Ann Maria thinks it would be better to fix upon a subject first; but
then she has never yet written a paper herself, so she does not realize
that you have to have some thoughts before you can write them. She
should think, she says, that I would write about something that I see.
But of what use is it for me to write about what everybody is seeing,
as long as they can see it as well as I do?

* * * * *

The paper about emergencies read last week was one of the best I ever
heard; but, of course, it would not be worth while for me to write the
same, even if I knew enough.

* * * * *

My commonplace-book ou