t Stephen Sewall would have called the
regular verbs transitive of your being, doing, and suffering,--and how
many of the one hundred and seven are only exceptional Lamed Hhes, at
which you can guess or which you can skip, if the great central
movements of your economies go bravely on.

I do not know, of course, whether Leander is fond of coffee, and whether
you drink tea or no. I can only tell you what is in our family, and
assure you that ours is a model family. Such a model is it, that Lois
has just now counted up the one hundred and seven articles for me,--has
shown me that they all together cost us nine hundred and twenty-six
dollars and thirty-two cents in the year 1863, and how much each of them
cost. Now our family consists,--

1. Of the baby, who is king.

2, 3. Of two nurses, who are prime-ministers, one of domestic affairs,
one of private education.

4, 5. Of a cook and table-girl, who are chancellor and foreign
secretary. These four make the cabinet.

6-8. Three older children; these are in the government, but not in the
cabinet.

9 and 10. Lois and I,--who pay the taxes, fight common enemies, and do
what the others tell us as well as we can.

This family, you observe, consists of six grown persons, and three
children old enough to eat, who are equivalent to a seventh. I may say,
in passing, that it therefore consumes just seven barrels of flour a
year.

To feed it, as Lois has just now shown you, cost in the year 1863 nine
hundred and twenty-six dollars and thirty-two cents. That is the way we
chose to live. We could have lived just as happily on half that sum,--we
could have lived just as wretchedly on ten times that sum. But, however
we lived, the proportions of our expense would not have varied much from
what I am now to teach you, dear Hero (if that really be your name).

BUTTER is the biggest expense-item of all. Of our nine hundred and
twenty-six dollars and thirty-two cents, ninety-one dollars and
twenty-six cents went for butter. Remember that your butter is one-tenth
part of the whole.

Next comes flour. Our seven barrels cost us seventy dollars and
eighty-three cents. We bought, besides, six dollars and seventy-six
cents' worth of bread, and six dollars and seventy-one cents' worth of
crackers,--convenient sometimes, dear Hero. So that your wheat-flour and
bread are almost a tenth of the whole.

Next comes beef, in all forms, ninety dollars and seventy-six cents;
there goes another