small kid
dressed in brass buttons. When I got into the hall it was about two
feet wide and darker than Pharaoh's conscience. It had a string of
cells along the side, and one opened into a chimney, and the rest into
nothin' in particular. The middle cell was a dinin' room where we ate
when we could find the way to our mouths. Near as I can recollect,
you got into the parlor through the pantry, back of the servant's
room, by jumpin' over five trunks. You ought to have seen my room. It
looked just like a parlor when you first went in. There was somethin'
lookin' like a cross between an upright piano and writin' desk. Sally
gave it a twist, and it tumbled out into a folding bed. The first
night, I laid awake with my eyes on the foot of that bed expectin' it
to rise and stand me on my head; but it didn't. You took the book of
poems off the center table, gave it a flop, and it was a washstand.
Everything seemed to shut up into something else it hadn't ought to.
It was a 'now you see it, and now you don't see it,' kind of a room;
and I seemed to be foldin' and unfoldin' most of the time. Then the
ceilin' was so low that you could hardly get the cover off the soap
dish. I felt all the while as if I should smother. My! but I was glad
to get home and get a breath of real air."

"Yes," Maxwell replied, "people live more natural and healthful lives
in the country. The advantages of the city aren't an unmixed
blessing."

"That's true enough. That's no way to live. Just think of havin' no
yard but a window box and a fire escape! I'd smother!

"We folks out here in the country 'aint enjoyin' a lot of the
refinements of city life; anyhow we get along, and the funny part
about it is,--it 'aint hard to do, either. In the first place we 'aint
so particular, which helps a lot, and besides, as Jonathan Jackson
used to say,--there's compensations. I had one look at Fifth Avenue
and I'm not sayin' it wasn't all I had heard it was; but if I had to
look at it three hundred and sixty-five days a year I wouldn't trade
it for this.

"Why, some days it rains up here, but I can sit at my window and look
down the valley, to where the creek runs through, and 'way up into the
timber, and the sight of all those green things, livin' and noddin' in
the rain is a long ways from being disheartenin',--and when the sun
shines I can sit out here, in my garden, with my flowers, and watch
the boys playin' down in the meadow, Bascom's Holsteins grazin' ove