hat a stupid life!
Too dull, upon my word!"
Cried all, "Before such things can come,
You idiotic child,
_You must alter Human Nature_!"
And they all sat back and smiled:
Thought they, "An answer to that last
It will be hard to find!"
It was a clinching argument
To the Neolithic Mind!

THE OLD MAID'S HOUSE: IN PLAN

BY ELIZABETH STUART PHELPS

Corona had five hundred dollars and some pluck for her enterprise. She
had also at her command a trifle for furnishing. But that seemed very
small capital. Her friends at large discouraged her generously. Even Tom
said he didn't know about that, and offered her three hundred more.

This manly offer she declined in a womanly manner.

"It is to be _my_ house, thank you, Tom, dear. I can live in yours at
home." ...

Corona's architectural library was small. She found on the top shelf one
book on the construction of chicken-roosts, a pamphlet in explanation of
the kindergarten system, a cook-book that had belonged to her
grandmother, and a treatise on crochet. There her domestic literature
came to an end. She accordingly bought a book entitled "North American
Homes"; then, having, in addition, begged or borrowed everything within
two covers relating to architecture that was to be found in her
immediate circle of acquaintance, she plunged into that unfamiliar
science with hopeful zeal.

The result of her studies was a mixed one. It was necessary, it seemed,
to construct the North American home in so many contradictory methods,
or else fail forever of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,
that Corona felt herself to be laboring under a chronic aberration of
mind.... Then the plans. Well, the plans, it must be confessed, Corona
_did_ find it difficult to understand. She always had found it difficult
to understand such things; but then she had hoped several weeks of close
architectural study would shed light upon the density of the subject.
She grew quite morbid about it. She counted the steps when she went
up-stairs to bed at night. She estimated the bedroom post when she
walked in the cold, gray dawn....

But the most perplexing thing about the plans was how one story ever got
upon another. Corona's imagination never fully grappled with this fact,
although her intellect accepted it. She took her books down-stairs one
night, and Susy came and looked them over.

"Why, these houses are all one-story," said Susy. "Be