much emphasis on the "ought." This clinches and
rivets the advice. When one says to you that you really ought to have
such or such a thing, he means, of course, that you would have it if
you were not either too poor or too stupid (or both) to get it. Alice
and I are poor in purse, but I deny that we are idiots.

Not to consume your time with further discourse upon this subject
(although I will concede that it has its fascinations and its
importance), I will say that the primitive roadway (illustrative of the
pre-glacial period) still winds its Saharan course through our
premises. For Alice and I are undetermined whether to follow our own
instincts and have a dirt road (there it is again!) or whether to
concede to neighborly influence in the matter of this driveway, just as
we have conceded upon nearly every other detail that has come up for
consideration within the last four months. I dare say we shall
eventually come back to our original plan, for it is already as clear
as the noonday sun that if we adopt the suggestion of any one neighbor
we shall have all the rest of our neighbors down on us for the rest of
our lives.

We had an unpleasant experience of this character in the matter of
wall-paper. It seems that Alice and Adah consulted all the women-folks
in their acquaintance, and after much agitation made such selections of
wall-paper as they believed would serve as a felicitous compromise
between all parties consulted and all tastes expressed. The result is
that nobody is suited--nobody but me. As for me, I am too much of a
philosopher and too busy with my philosophy to spend any time worrying
about the color or the pattern of the paper on the walls. If the paper
is not so prepossessing as it might be, I should be glad that it is
upon my walls rather than upon the walls of those whom it would vex
much more than it does me.

I do not mind telling you that my favorite color in wall-paper (as well
as in everything else) is red, and it was a delicate concession upon
Alice's part to cover the walls of my study over the kitchen with paper
of undeniably red hue, upon which appear tracings of yellowish white in
a pattern particularly pleasing to my uneducated eye. Little
Josephine's room (which is shared by Alice's sister Adah) is decorated
with wall-paper in which red is also the predominant color. The
pattern is of bunches of roses in full bloom, and these counterfeit
presentments are so true to the life th