a journey. On my writing-table another set stood around my inkstand
and pen-rack, who, pointing to those on the floor, seemed to debate some
question among themselves; while others of them appeared to be
collecting and packing away in tiny trunks certain fairy treasures,
preparatory to a general departure. When I looked at the social hearth,
at my wife's sofa and work-basket, I saw similar appearances of
dissatisfaction and confusion. It was evident that the household fairies
were discussing the question of a general and simultaneous removal. I
groaned in spirit, and, stretching out my hand, began a conciliatory
address, when whisk went the whole scene from before my eyes, and I
awaked to behold the form of my wife asking me if I were ill or had had
the nightmare that I groaned so. I told her my dream, and we laughed at
it together.

"We must give way to the girls a little," she said. "It is natural, you
know, that they should wish us to appear a little as other people do.
The fact is, our parlor is somewhat dilapidated; think how many years we
have lived in it without an article of new furniture."

"I hate new furniture," I remarked, in the bitterness of my soul. "I
hate anything new."

My wife answered me discreetly, according to approved principles of
diplomacy. I was right. She sympathized with me. At the same time, it
was not necessary, she remarked, that we should keep a hole in our
sofa-cover and arm-chair; there would certainly be no harm in sending
them to the upholsterer's to be new-covered; she didn't much mind, for
her part, moving her plants to the south back-room, and the bird would
do well enough in the kitchen: I had often complained of him for singing
vociferously when I was reading aloud.

So our sofa went to the upholsterer's; but the upholsterer was struck
with such horror at its clumsy, antiquated, unfashionable appearance,
that he felt bound to make representations to my wife and daughters:
positively, it would be better for them to get a new one, of a tempting
pattern, which he showed them, than to try to do anything with that.
With a stitch or so here and there it might do for a basement
dining-room; but, for a parlor, he gave it as his disinterested
opinion,--he must say, if the case were his own, he should get, etc.,
etc. In short, we had a new sofa and new chairs, and the plants and the
birds were banished, and some dark green blinds were put up to exclude
the sun from the parlor, and the