no sooner do you buy a place of your own than you
are run to death by people who actually prove to you that you _must_
have what they have to sell.

Alice and I are very happy in the confidence that we have secured a
simple device which is going to reduce our coal bill by at least fifty
per cent.; it is a fuel-saving machine which is to be attached to our
new steam-heating apparatus, and if it accomplishes anything like what
the agent said it would, why, it is worth five dollars ten times over!
And we are expecting wonders, too, of the gas-saving apparatus for
which we have paid three dollars and which is to be attached to the
meter with such pleasing results that we shall have five times more
light at a saving of at least sixty per cent in cost.

I find upon consulting my expense account for May that during that
month alone Alice and I purchased no fewer than thirty devices of an
economical character. We have three different kinds of
smoke-consumers, an automatic carpet-sweeper, a bottle of lightning
polish for plate-glass, a dish-washing machine, a knife-scourer, a
potato-parer, two automatic lawn-hose reels, a sewer-gas consumer, a
patent ashes-sifter, etc., etc. It has required a considerable outlay
of money to get stocked up with these things, but we regard them as a
very wise investment. It is wholly consistent with our policy of
economy to provide ourselves with the means of making a marked
reduction in our expenses. We flatter ourselves that before we have
been in our house six months we shall have demonstrated that we are not
upon earth for the purpose of enriching gas companies and other
soulless corporations.

But I think the wisest investment we have made is the insurance policy
which we have taken out on Alice's life. The incident came about so
curiously that I feel inclined to tell it in detail. I was one evening
sitting out in front of our house--the rented one, I mean--watching the
stars gradually making their appearance in the cerulean vault, and I
was marvelling at the endless wonders of the heavenly expanse, when I
became aware that somebody was approaching. I saw that this somebody
was my Sheridan Road friend and neighbor, Treese Smith. He was
whistling softly to himself an air which I did not recognize, but which
my daughter Fanny (who is a music connoisseur) identified as "My Pearl
Is a Bowery Girl." Presuming that he was coming to pay me a neighborly
call, I arose to meet him. Fancy