g
skill. As for Uncle Si, he must have gathered together a pretty fair
general idea of what Alice wanted, for he promised to return the next
day with plans and details and with an estimate of what the
contemplated improvements would cost.

Meanwhile another complication had arisen. The people to whom the
widow Schmittheimer had rented the lower part of the house declined to
vacate the premises unless we paid them a bonus of fifteen dollars.
Alice indignantly protested that we had no fifteen dollars to throw
away, and I recognized the truth of this proposition. Still, a visit
to the recalcitrant tenants convinced me that they were poor folk and
could ill afford to bear the expense of moving. Another circumstance
that made me feel rather kindly toward these people was that their name
was Mitchell, and, although they made no such claim, it pleased me to
fancy that they were of kin to that distinguished family which has
contributed so largely to the glory of native astronomical research.

Actuated, therefore, by the most honorable impulses, I gave these
people fifteen dollars which I borrowed for that purpose from my most
estimable neighbor, Mrs. Tiltman, upon the understanding that I should
pay it back when I heard from "The Sidereal Torch," to which
publication I had sent a carefully prepared essay on Encke's comet. In
this wise a matter which might have caused us much delay and vexation
was quickly and amicably disposed of. I did not tell Alice of what I
had done, for although Alice is (as I have already assured you) the
most amiable of her sex, she cannot brook what she regards as an
imposition, and this inclination to resent seeming overbearance in
others has not unfrequently put us to expense and involved us in
embarrassment.

Another episode which is still fresh in my memory I cannot forbear
relating. Alice came to me one day not long ago--it was perhaps three
weeks since--and insisted that I should attend to having the correct
name of the avenue in which we were to live put upon the lamp-posts at
the corners of that avenue. I could not guess what Alice meant until
she informed me that, although the name of that thoroughfare had by
ordinance of the City Council been changed from Mush Street to
Clarendon Avenue, the old name of Mush Street had (by a singular
inadvertence) been suffered to remain upon the lamp-posts along that
highway.

"The idea!" cried Alice, indignantly. "Do you suppose I would live
u