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 THE WHITE CROSS LIBRARY. 
 
 *y/rt 
 
 THE 
 
 SWAMP ANGEL 
 
 BY 
 
 PRENTICE MULFORD. 
 
 Copyrighted February, iSSS, by 
 F. J. NEEDHAM, PUBLISHER, 
 
 No. 22 TREMONT ROW, 
 BOSTON. 
 

 
 BOSTON, MASS : 
 
 PRESS OF EMERY-HUGHES, 
 
 146 OLIVER ST. 
 
 
THE SWAMP ANGEL 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 ALPHA. 
 
 I had long entertained the idea of building for 
 myself a house in the woods, and there living alone. 
 Not that I was cynical, or disgusted with the world. 
 I have no reason to be disgusted with the world. It 
 has given me lots of amusement, sandwiched be- 
 tween headaches, periods of rej)entance, and sundry 
 hours spent in the manufacture of good resolutions, 
 many of which I could not keep, because they spoiled 
 so quickly on my hands. I have tried to treat the 
 world pretty well, and it has rewarded me. For the 
 world invariably returns kick for kick, frown for 
 frown, smile for smile ; and if my reader is a pretty 
 girl, you will keep your beauty far longer by having 
 ever a smile on your face, that comes from the heart, 
 and is not for company occasions, painted on the sur- 
 face. 
 
 I found at last, in New Jersey, a piece of woods, a 
 swamp, a spring near by, a rivulet, and, above all, 
 a noble, wide-branching oak. The owner willingly 
 consented to my building there, and under the oak 
 I built. 
 
 That was five years ago. I was then forty-nine 
 
 3 
 
years of age, and feel no older oow; in fact, not 
 quite s<» old. What others may Peel, about my ,k time 
 of life," is another affair. The main point La involved 
 in one's own feelings on this head. While a bottle 
 of champagne is actively at work in a man's organ- 
 ization, what does he eare how others feel as to his 
 condition or age ? 
 
 I had seen, in these torty-nine years, two years of 
 life as an indifferent sailor on a merchant vessel and 
 whaler. On the latter I was cook, to the misery of 
 all on board who came within the range of my culi- 
 nary misdeeds. It was not discovered that I had 
 never learned this noble and necessary art until our 
 vessel was off soundings, and then it was too late to 
 repair the damage. I was twelve years in California, 
 where I dug a little gold and a good deal of dirt. I 
 have taught school, tended bar, kept a grocery, run 
 for the legislature, been a post officer, peddled a very 
 tough article of beef on horseback, to the miners on 
 the Tuolumne river bars and gulches, started a hog 
 ram-he and failed, served as a special policeman, 
 and tax collector, kept an express office, prospected 
 for silver in the Nevadas, found nothing but snow, 
 scenery, and misery, pre-empted no end of land, laid 
 out towns which are laid out yet, run a farm to 
 weeds and farrow land, and lectured, and written a 
 good deal for the papers. I have tried my constitu- 
 tion and its by-laws in ways both reputable and 
 otherwise, but it 's sound yet, though I could have 
 had as many diseases as I liked, by believing in them 
 and paying the doctor and druggist for them. I have 
 seen (ape Horn, London, Paris. Vienna, a whale in a 
 
"flurry," a ship's crew in mutiny, and a woman who 
 did not want a new bonnet. But she was dead. I 
 lived two years in England, had a splendid time on a 
 
 very small capital, saw the land from the Scottish 
 border to the Straits of Dover, and Lived with over 
 thirty families, high, low, rich, poor, patrician, and ple- 
 bian, I have an ex-mother-in-law. Before I started 
 out in life, when a boy of fourteen, I had charge 
 of a country hotel, which I ran ashore in four years ; 
 but it never cost the girls and boys of my youthful 
 era a cent for horse-hire out of my stables. I had a 
 good time keeping that hotel, which my poor father, 
 on dying, left to my mother. She had necessarily 
 to give it largely in charge of her eldest and only 
 son. I was that son. My mother disliked the busi- 
 . being soberly inclined, and I got her out of it 
 ton as possible, by managing, or rather misman- 
 aging, things in such a way that the expenditures 
 went considerably beyond the income. So I did 
 a good tiling for her, as well as having a good time 
 myself. We kept a bar, which the boys of my own 
 size patronized to a considerable extent, so their 
 refreshments cost them little or nothing, generally 
 nothing ; which fact, though conducive to the gen- 
 eral hilarity, did not increase the profits. My native 
 village was a place where for a boy to tell his 
 mother all he had thought, felt, and experienced for 
 the last twenty-four hours, would have brought him 
 enough scolding, and bald, ungilded admonition, as 
 to terrify him out of all goodness and candor for a 
 month ; where the girls went regularly to the even- 
 ing prayer-meetings, there to wish that the boys 
 
•; 
 
 might not fail to be on the outside of the church, to 
 sec thein home : where the hoys systematically and 
 conscientiously, and without a pang, lied to their 
 fathers, as their fathers had lied to grandpa ; where 
 at fifteen they called mother the " old woman," and 
 at heart ridiculed her ignorance of numerous things 
 outside of her kingdom, because they had caught the 
 habit and idea from "pa"; where one-half the town 
 were total teetotalers, who hated whiskey drinkers 
 worse than they did whiskey, and called all who dif- 
 fered with them in belief and practice hard names 
 at intemperate temperance meetings, and where the 
 speakers got as drunk on zeal, enthusiasm, prejudice, 
 and excitement, as other drunkards do on gin. I 
 managed to abolish our bar in a few years, on the 
 principle of making the expenditures over-size the 
 income, and so did another good thing, as the young 
 men had then to go elsewhere for their stimulant, 
 and pay for it, too ; a condition of affairs always pro- 
 motive of temperance, if not of morality. When I 
 had accomplished all this, and that 's a good deal to 
 accomplish before reaching the age of eighteen, I went 
 forth into the world to seek my fortune, and have 
 been seeking it ever since, with results, of course, 
 some for and some against me. But I 've had a good 
 time, anyway, and I intend to have better. 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 LAYING THE CORNER-STONE. 
 
 I bought about fifty dollars' worth of boards and 
 joist, and had them carted and dumped under my 
 oak. No hand save mine laid the foundations. I laid 
 the floor first. I had no well-defined plan about 
 building; I laid my floor boards first, because it came 
 handiest so to do. It was so much of the house 
 built, anyway. I let the structure grow naturally. 
 I presume a professional carpenter would have put 
 up the frame before laying the floor. But I felt that 
 if I got the floor off my mind, the rest of the edifice 
 would grow on it somehow, as it did. I know that 
 I violated all the architectural proprieties in build- 
 ing as I did, and performed one hundred times the 
 work necessary ; yet the work to me was all play. 
 For it was nothing but a big box of. twelve-foot 
 boards, and when completed, not near so ornate or 
 regular in shape as those the manufacturers box up 
 their horse-cars in, for shipping to distant places. 
 But I was not building to suit propriety or other peo- 
 ple. I was building to suit myself. I wanted entire 
 liberty, for once in my life, to make blunders without 
 being inspected, over-looked, criticised, and sermon- 
 ized by other people. I had such liberty, and I made 
 the blunders. Never during the two months that 
 I was engaged in putting up this ramshackle shanty 
 
 7 
 
s 
 
 did a soul come near me to stare at me, and gape, 
 and tell me I was doing things wrong; or even if 
 such a pest did not say what he thought, to look as 
 if lit- thought it all the same, and in so thinking make 
 me Eeel that he thought it. Such people are pestif- 
 erous. I want to do things in my own way. and 
 make my own mistakes, and learn as I go along; and 
 when I get ready to ask how to do them better, of 
 anyone that knows better, then, and not till then, do 
 I want advice and suggestion. It is a luxury to go 
 blundering on in this way; and 1 had it. and was 
 willing to pay for it. My lot was at the end of a big 
 corn-field, in sight of but one honse ; out of sight of 
 all main roads, and nobody could get near me, unless 
 they walked a mile to do so. 
 
 So in the snow and the rain, as well as the mud, 
 into which I managed to tramp a good deal of the 
 semi-swampy soil about my house by hundreds of 
 possibly unnecessary footsteps, did I build and blun- 
 der, during the months of January and February. 
 I slept in a neighbor's house at night, footed a mile 
 to the railway station in the morning, reached 
 the city by half past seven, did my two hours 1 
 work in a newspaper office, made a summary of 
 the same eternal round of events, such as murders, 
 burglaries, suicides by pistol, razor, rope, or poi- 
 son, embezzlements (high-toned), thefts (low-toned), 
 smash-ups, fires, bursted boilers, falling elevators, 
 gas explosions, kerosene burnings, failures, and 
 everything else, which are always happening in all 
 civilized communities just the same one year after 
 another, the only difference being that the victim 
 
9 
 
 or the villain has a different name this year from 
 what he had at the same date last. I wonder why 
 people are interested in reading such a monotonous 
 and ghastly catalogue of horrors as I dished up 
 
 for them daily. I wonder if they will so continue 
 to read through all eternity, in case their lives 
 are spared that somewhat incomputable period. 
 I wonder what is the great necessity or profit of 
 knowing, after you have eaten your breakfast cakes 
 and sausage, that a tramp was found last night hang- 
 ing to a tree in Central Park, or that an idiot killed 
 himself with prnssic acid and died on a park bench, 
 where possibly you may sit tomorrow, because the 
 girl he wanted to marry and make miserable pre- 
 ferred to marry and be made miserable by some other 
 idiot. I wrote also editorials, and told the world 
 how in certain matters, social, political, and other- 
 wise, things were awfully mismanaged, and how they 
 ought to be managed. I was then more interested in 
 reforming the world than in reforming myself, and 
 kept the electric light of my brain turned far more 
 on other people's sins or mistakes than on my own. 
 I worked at this calling long enough to find out that 
 there are three kinds of editors : editors who can 
 write, and have business talent besides ; and editors 
 who can write all about it, not having practical 
 gumption enough to drive a nail straight, or tell a 
 ten-months' chicken, when dressed, from a tough, 
 ten-year-old hen ; and lastly, editors who can scarcely 
 write at all, but who know how to set others to writ- 
 ing, and tell them what to write about, and so work 
 their writers* brains to great profit to themselves, as 
 
10 
 
 they are justified in doing; for if yon \e got one tal- 
 ent, and don't work your other business talent along 
 with it. some one else will turu thai crank, and turn 
 what might be your profits from such talent, into 
 their owu pockets. I 've sat in editorial rooms along- 
 side of college-educated men, whose minds were 
 storehouses of book learning and little else, who 
 were hacking away with their pens at any work the 
 boss cut out for them, at ten dollars a week: who 
 wrote and grumbled, and grumbled and wrote, poor 
 fellows, because, as they said, their talent wasn't bet- 
 ter appreciated : who were always talking of what they 
 would do, if they only had a better show ; who railed 
 at this mercenary age, and the mercenary manage- 
 ment of the paper they wrote for, and who never 
 dreamed that the only way for a man to get a fair 
 show in this world to air his ideas is to take responsi- 
 bilities and make the "show" for himself, just as the 
 head man in the office down stairs, who paid them 
 their weekly pittance, had done, and who used them 
 as literary grubbing hoes, because they dare not be 
 anything else but grubbing hoes. 
 
 However, I served up daily this intellectual stew, 
 made from the ingredients of our barbaric civiliza- 
 tion, with a tolerably clear conscience ; first, because 
 I was well paid for it ; secondly, I liked the work ; 
 and thirdly, because the public wanted their daily 
 horrors spiced as I spiced it ; and then at half past 
 ten in the forenoon, I flew back by rail to my be- 
 loved swamp, where I labored till dusk, overlooked 
 only by an occasional crow, perched on a neighbor- 
 ing tree, cross, tired, and hungry, because there was 
 no young corn to pull up. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 BUYING TOOLS, AND ABOUT BUYING. 
 
 Before building, I bought many carpenters' tools 
 wherewith to build. I bought tools during the en- 
 tire period of building. I bought many more than 
 were necessary. Any bungler of a carpenter could 
 have put up my shanty with a saw, hammer, and the 
 necessary nails. But saws and planes and chisels 
 and augers, with new handles and bright, glittering 
 edges, became fascinations for me. I became in- 
 volved and drawn into this peculiar vortex of tool 
 buying, and could scarcely pass a hardware shop, 
 without thinking I wanted some of the wares I saw 
 in the window. I did want them. But I didn't 
 need many of them, save, possibly, the need of the 
 pleasure they gave me in the buying, and afterwards 
 in contemplating them. There is a great charm in 
 buying new things, whether you need them or not. 
 A passion for buying can so suddenly break out, and 
 empty your purse much faster than you can fill it. 
 I can well understand and sympathize with ladies 
 who go out shopping, and return home dripping with 
 ten times more bundles than they intended. There 
 is a mysterious and dangerous influence in stores, 
 tempting you to buy things, that you find, on getting 
 home, you don't want. I found, after a time, that 
 the only successful method of resisting this was to 
 
 11 
 
12 
 
 brace up, and resolve firmly to buy only the article 
 I bad previouly determined to buy. Armed with 
 this. I could get in a store and out again without 
 being Loaded down with gimcracks. 
 
 Much that I bought needlessly I did while under 
 the influence of those small commercial magicians, 
 the clerks, who make yon feel, through and through, 
 
 on going into their stores, that you must buy some- 
 thing, whether yon wish to or not; and that to look 
 five minutes at their wares, without buying, La rob-' 
 bing them of valuable time. Yon must go with all 
 
 your wits and full pressure of decision about you. in 
 order to resist successfully the silent power of these 
 men. The whole atmosphere of some stores is sur- 
 charged with a buy-compelling element. You are in 
 its bonds and fetters immediately on going in. From 
 tin- boss down, all are determined that no customer 
 passes out without buying something. That thought 
 of determination is literally in the air; and if you are 
 tired and hungry, and, above all, hurried, or unde- 
 cided, your mind will be captured by these mercan- 
 tile magicians. They will put their thought in you. 
 You will think it and not your own. Their minds 
 are centred on a purpose — to sell. Hence they are 
 strong in that direction. Your mind is not centred 
 on anything. Hence you are weak. So you buy 
 what they make you buy, when you think you are 
 buying it yourself. You 're not. They 're selling it 
 to you. Small blame to them. It's their business to 
 sell. It's your business, and my business, when we 
 become buyers, to go to the seller with something of 
 
13 
 
 a clear idea of what we want, first ; secondly, not to 
 
 go in a fluster; thirdly, not to have our mind in that 
 store half an hour before our body gets there, as we 
 must have when suffering that general complaint, 
 hurry; and then we may find, on getting home, that 
 we \e bought the thing Ave wanted, and not the thing 
 the dry-goods magician forced us to buy, and which, 
 on getting the use of our own wits, we find we nei- 
 ther like, want, or need. I don't blame salesmen for 
 so working their spells on purchasers. It's a matter 
 with them of self-protection, after all; for if they 
 sympathized with us, and thereby got into our flab- 
 by, aimless, undecided frame of mind, we then should 
 be working and controlling their minds and acts, 
 bringing them temporarily into a state of semi-idiocy, 
 during which they might sell out the whole store to 
 us at half price. It is a wonder to me that salesmen 
 and saleswomen can keep from going more or less 
 insane, when you consider the shoals of cross-grained, 
 undecided, aimless, and run-down-in-mind-and-body 
 people, they have daily to meet and deal with. Be- 
 cause, if you live all the time in an insane asylum, 
 your own head is apt to tumble more or less off its 
 base ; and some of our big stores, when filled with 
 hurried skurried customers, especially during the 
 holidays, do suggest the approaches to an insane asy- 
 lum. Were I a salesman, I would sell my father and 
 mother and all the lot, down to the third and fourth 
 generations, a brass watch for one of gold, and that 
 with a clear conscience, providing they came to buy 
 of me in that wicked and iniquitous frame of mind 
 
14 
 
 born of hurry, indecision, and the desire of getting 
 something for nothing. Carrying wash a head about 
 and inflicting it on people is an outrage and a public 
 injury; and I have carried sneh a head, and did this 
 sin and outrage many and many a time myself. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 ABOUT MY HENS. 
 
 I avish to tell the remainder of my building trials 
 in the present tense. I don't know why, but in so 
 doing I am brought in closer connection with my 
 house-building experience. The reader w T ill there- 
 fore consider me as building my house, as he travels 
 along with me in these pages. 
 
 I have built a hen-coop, and keep hens. The hen- 
 coop is built on the experience and consequent skill 
 gathered in building the house, and as a result, is 
 in point of symmetry a better construction than the 
 house. I have always loved hens from infancy, 
 being brought up among them by my widowed ma- 
 ternal grandmother, who lived alone in an old house, 
 with numerous hens and cats. She was a queer, 
 quiet, old lady, who never went to church, read her 
 Bible regularly every Sunday, would never have 
 a coal-stove in her house, burned wood, never saw a 
 railroad or sailed on a steamboat, never went out 
 visiting, made beautiful mince pies, ate a piece reg- 
 ularly every night at nine o'clock, gave me one, ditto, 
 took snuff, and hated old T , the bawling under- 
 taker who lived next door, who was on the howl 
 from morning till night, whose yard was always 
 crammed with hearses, broken wagons, barrows, 
 boxes, barrels, lumber which she said, "always looked 
 a> if the devil had tipped up his cart there." 
 
 15 
 
16 
 
 She h'ad seen a 1 > i t of the Revolutionary war, had 
 English soldiers quartered in her father's house, 
 
 and said she liked thein far better than the Ameri- 
 can "skinners" and "cowboys," who, crossing Long 
 
 Island Sound on boats from the Connecticut shore, 
 plundered and outraged our people, on pretence thai 
 
 they were Tories. It was my grandmother's delight 
 on Saturdays, our market day. to watch the running 
 away of some farmer's team, as one or more generally 
 did, and see the butter pats fall out of the wagon's 
 rear into the dusty street, while the proprietor ran 
 after, crying " Whoa ! " and picking them up as they 
 fell. But she could prevail on her hens to lay more 
 eggs, in proportion to their numbers and size, than 
 any other hens in the town. 
 
 She did n't like real good boys, and made pets of 
 the notoriously bad ones, and would call them in 
 betimes and treat them to her fresh gingerbread and 
 pie. She liked to have me with her, and I was the 
 only one of the family she cared to see ; and I liked 
 to be with her, much against my parents' inclina- 
 tions, for I had with her more liberty and more pie, 
 and could play till nine o'clock at night with our 
 gang of off-color street urchins, of whom the boss 
 and " Big Injun " was, of course, " Nigger Hen," who 
 lorded it over us and licked us, when necessary, and 
 had more spending money than all the rest of us put 
 together. He was the bosom friend of my extreme 
 youth, until one day I was put up by the mischievous 
 clerks in my father's store, to prevail on him to blow 
 a trick wind-mill loaded with flour, a cloud whereof 
 puffed in Nigger Hen's face as he applied his lips to 
 
1 
 
 the blowing tube. For that In- cast me off. So I lost 
 him, and took up with ••Urn Hill," whose dailylife 
 was an incessant lugging of pics in a basket from 
 his mother's house to his father's pie, peanut, and 
 root beer store. I loved Henry, because, in passing 
 through our yard, as he was obliged to do, he allowed 
 me to sample his pies. We would retire together to 
 the recesses of an empty dry-goods box, and knew 
 skilful methods of raising, with an old spoon, the 
 upper crusts of the mince, huckleberry, and other 
 pies, and abstracting a prudential portion of the inner 
 contents, and consigning them to our boyish and 
 never-satisfied stomachs. So Henry rested while I 
 ate. Externally, Henry was more or less pie, which 
 clung to him in fragments; and where he wasn't 
 pie he was ice cream, in stains, for he used to work 
 the freezer in his mother's cellar; and Ave had 
 another old spoon there, hidden in a chink of the 
 wall, with which we tested that ice cream at fre- 
 quent intervals, as it grew from the liquid to the 
 congealed form of combination. Little did the little 
 aristocracy of my native town, who ate ice cream in 
 Mrs. Hill's parlors, dream whose fingers had first 
 been in it: for when time or circumstances were 
 pressing, we found fingers as handy as spoons; and 
 I have sometimes noticed, later in life, that people 
 who are enjoying choice and exclusive morsels, may 
 little dream what may have handled such morsels an 
 hour before they were served up. 
 
 As I am speaking here of hens, or at least intended 
 to. on commencing this chapter, I have thought it 
 proper to introduce " Nigger Hen " and "Hen Hill " 
 
L8 
 
 first. I have inherited both my grandmother's pas- 
 sion and talent for keeping hens, and experience the 
 .same thrill of pleasure <>n finding the half dozen or 
 dozen daily, of white, (dear, newly-laid eggs in the 
 nest, that I did when a boy of twelve. The beauty 
 and value of life lies in being aide to enjoy what you 
 enjoyed when the body was young, and the spirit. 
 with its new suit of clothes, having shaken off the 
 <»1<1 one, lias come again, "dressed up," into this 
 mundane world. It is Erom the age of four till four- 
 teen that the sun shines with a glory, and the moon 
 with a lustre, and the very grass and leaves seem 
 fresher and greener than in Later years, and why'/ 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 MENTAL DIFFICULTIES. 
 
 The house lias tour sides, a sloping roof, two large 
 windows fronting south, one hole for the door, another 
 for tlif stove-pipe, and about one hundred and fifty 
 cracks; most of the cracks 1 made myself, incident- 
 ally and accidentally, in failures to make the ends of 
 the hoards meet properly at the corners, and the rest 
 made themselves, through the "checking" or splitting 
 the unseasoned lumber. When the warm spring 
 stiu came, I was surprised to see how the outer boards 
 w<»uld squirm and split : knots fell out also, and left 
 hoh-s. large and small : 1 got ahead of them by nailing 
 boards over them. I had no idea before that nature 
 had so many unseen forces, always at work to inter- 
 fere with man's constructions. When the frost came 
 out of the ground, causing a movement in the soil, 
 my floor settled into perceptible undulations. Of 
 course tin- roof and sides, sympathizing with the 
 floor, Bettled also. Air came up through the floor 
 I headed that off by a covering of old oil- 
 cloth. Then rain came through sundry roof cracks: 
 1 stopped that with a covering of new oil-cloth, of 
 gaudy pattern and bright colors. It was a gay roof, 
 r than any part of the interior: it reminded one 
 of a new check ulster, covering and concealing a coat 
 full of years, holes, and experience. People laughed 
 
 19 
 
20 
 
 at 1 1 1 \ oil-cloth sheathed roof. They said, "Why oof 
 use tin. or shingles?" "Because," I said, "oil-cloth 
 
 is cheaper by half, and it will last as lou-- as I want 
 tin- roof." Bui they said. "It's odd covering a roof 
 with oil-cloth." "Well,"] said, "what if it is odd? 
 Somebody must always do tin* odd thing first, and 
 ['ve done it. Columbus was odd when he insisted 
 on 'going west' to find a new land. Von poke fun 
 at the <><\d man or woman, and may be in a twelve- 
 month you "11 all l)c practicing his or her oddity, 
 pecially if you can make two cents by it." 
 
 The article I had most of. and took least of. in my 
 house-building, was time. My mind was always 
 ahead of my work, rather than on it. If nailing on 
 one hoard. I was thinking of the next, or possibly 
 endeavoring to generate a plan for the hen-coop. I 
 was always trying to strain the building ahead in 
 my mind : I strained only myself. A thing can't be 
 done well, any faster than when your mind works the 
 hotly easily and gently on the thing it's now doing. 
 Nailing boards and thinking hen-coop brought me 
 smashed fingers. My hammer wanted then the at- 
 tention I was giving the hen-coop. The lack of it 
 sent the head on my finger, instead of the ten-penny 
 nail I was driving. 
 
 I find that to do things, and do them at their 
 best, it is necessary to put all the mind or thought 
 you happen to have about you on the thing you 're 
 doing "right now." whether that doing he the driv- 
 ing of a nail, or the writing of an article which you 
 imagine will make the world's hair stand on end (and 
 it's in big luck you are if vou raise a single hair). I 
 
have come to the conclusion thai a man's thoughts 
 
 arc literally his strength of muscle, as well as mind ; 
 and it' you don't believe it. gel on a topsail yard in a 
 gale off Capo Hatteras, or a Pampa gust off the La 
 Plata, and while you're trying, with the rest of the 
 watch, to flatten down and haul in a rebellious sail, 
 heavy with rain or sleet, flapping your face with its 
 heavy-laden canvas lists, and doing its hot to knock 
 
 you overboard, see then it' it's the time or place to 
 think what you M say to the gjrl you left behind you, 
 or the girl who left you behind for the other fellow, 
 or plan out the cut and pattern of your next pair of 
 pantaloons. When I was sawing off my board ends 
 under my oak in A.D. 188-3 (as time is now some- 
 what ridiculously computed, though we know the 
 earth is millions of years older, no offence here being 
 offered to the Christian calendar), when I say I was 
 sawing off board ends and wondering and speculating 
 whether or no the Democrats would astonish them- 
 selves and elect a President, I generally sawed them 
 askew and awry and on a diagonal pattern, if not 
 - : and ten to one. if not in so doing, I absent- 
 mindedly used my rip saws instead of the cross-cut, 
 which, of course, as every lady knows who uses buck 
 and other saws, is the saw to saw a board's end off, in- 
 I of sawing it through the middle. I suffered so 
 much in body as well as mind, through hammer bang- 
 ing of thumb and lingers, sawing boards crooked and 
 tumbling over things, as well as myself, because 
 through original sin and the habit of a life-time, my 
 mind and thought would go straying off on the 
 thing I proposed to do rather than on the thing I 
 
22 
 
 was at the time doing, that in order to cure and relieve 
 myself of so much suffering, I painted in Letters of 
 lamp-black and turpentine on all sides of the house. 
 these mottoes : •• Take time for all things." " Do but 
 one thing at a time." And vet in the very act of bo 
 painting, I forgol my own moral and what I was 
 about, and painted one letter half an inch above or 
 below the line of another ; because, while painting, the 
 force I used to handle tin- brush with, was off and 
 away in some place ten or a thousand miles distant : 
 and it' it was there, how could it do the work here? 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 WHAT IS OWNERSHIP? 
 
 I own this badly-constructed, fifty-dollar house in 
 the Jersey swamp. Very Pew people own the houses 
 they live in as thoroughly as I do mine. Oftener the 
 houses own them. I dominate this house largely. 
 
 I can. if I wish, set it on fire. There are no neigh- 
 bors within sight, whose property would thereby be 
 endangered. 
 
 I live in no town or village, whose inhabitants 
 would be alarmed at my conflagration, and who 
 would annoy me by trying to put it out. Fifty 
 dollars' worth of rough lumber would soon burn up. 
 I can cut holes anywhere through my walls, without 
 asking permission of a landlord. I can fill the place 
 with smoke, without fear of troubling other tenants. 
 I ran arise at midnight, drive nails, saw wood, or 
 indulge in any other noisy employment, without the 
 fear hanging over me and fretting me that I am dis- 
 turbing somebody's rest. I can leave my slippers as 
 I took them off, the toe of one pointing north and the 
 other south, and find them a week afterward, on my 
 return, in the same position, and not hidden in the 
 most obscure corner by the troublesome chamber- 
 maid. I fear not to leave mud on my own carpet. 
 I am not tied to stated meal hours. I am not 
 harassed by the possibility of unwelcome callers. 
 
 23 
 
24 
 
 My faults, whatever they arc here within these four 
 walls, trouble no one but myself. I own and have 
 the exclusive right to my hallway. I can bring gro- 
 ceries and parcels myself to my OWD front door. I 
 
 fear no janitor. I am not obliged to conceal a beer 
 
 pitcher under my coat, and slip out by him with tear 
 and trembling, if I want beer, because beer at this 
 flat is allowed to he brought in at the front door. 
 I am dominated by no landlady, who grumbles it' I 
 eat a peanut in the room, and Leave a shell on the 
 floor. I can drive all sizes of nails into the walls. I 
 can paste pictures on those walls, or paint them in all 
 colors, if I choose. I can keep a menagerie in the 
 house, without fear of any other tenant's complaint. 
 Butchers and grocers do not litter my hallway with 
 their advertising circulars. There is no couple resi- 
 dent on a floor above, whose quarrels or Caudle lec- 
 tures fall down at night through the elevator-shaft 
 into my ears. 1 am tormented by no neighbor's culi- 
 nary smells. I have no printed landlord's ordinance 
 staring me perpetually in the face, warning me with 
 pains and penalties if I throw coffee-grounds down 
 the drain-pipes. If water falls on my floor there is 
 no horror of its leaking to the floor below, loosening 
 plaster and damaging furniture. 
 
 I have no servant to play the domestic spy. grum- 
 ble at the butter, entertain her relatives at my ex- 
 pense, break the best china, and he found drunk on 
 the stairs. But Diogenes owned his tun. and could 
 roll it away from a disagreeable neighborhood, roll it 
 in the sun in winter, the shade in summer, and away 
 from the river when it was rising. And he was richer 
 
than even I am. What is ownership? Is ii paying 
 for something whose use musl be regulated by other 
 people's opinions or habits? How many people, in a 
 sense, own the clothes they wear? Do I own a pair 
 o( hoots, which so pinch and torture me thai I take 
 them o\'\' so soon as I am out o{ other people's sight, 
 or is it the fashionable public w hich owns these boots, 
 and forces me to wear them? Do I own a standing 
 collar, which tries to cut my throat at every turn of 
 my head, or the fashionable public? Do I own my- 
 self, or am I housed, fed, and dressed according to 
 the desire or whim of certain people whom I feel 
 I must imitate, or be nothing? 
 
 1 saw a woman the other day going home from a 
 shopping excursion, and carrying laboriously six 
 bundles. I saw anxiety in her face and weariness in 
 her arms. When she stepped into the street car. it 
 was with fear lest a package should drop. When 
 she sat down, it was to distribute bundles in front 
 and on either side of her. and then count to see that 
 none were missing. If, on the trip, she lapsed into 
 momentary forgetfulness, she awoke with a start to 
 the sense of her burthen of many bundles, and the 
 fear that one might have been stolen. When she 
 got out, she was still passing through this ordeal and 
 trial of bundles. Yet those bundles contained arti- 
 which she had bought because they pleased her 
 fancy. Xo sooner had she bought them, no sooner 
 had she. as she imagined, acquired proprietorship 
 over them, than they captured and enslaved her. 
 This was on a Saturday night. 1 have no doubt that 
 some of those bundles wavlaid her on her wav to 
 
26 
 
 church, held possession of more or Less of her soul, 
 and absorbed some of her devotions. I speak in full 
 Bympath} with this poor woman, for I have many 
 times been so captured by bundles myself , — bundles 
 of petty caics. bundles of imaginary wants, bundles 
 of borrowed troubles, and bundles of vain imagin- 
 ings. What a load of care sin- carried home in those 
 bundles. There were "things to make up." lint 
 the dressmaker did not come according to appoint- 
 ment. Care Dumber one. When she did come she 
 fitted the dress badly. Trouble two. When she 
 
 finished the work she charged more than was ex- 
 pected. Trouble three. When the dress was finished 
 it was necessary to ask her husband tor more money. 
 Trouble lour. Nor was it finished in time for the 
 party. Trouble live. Did the poor woman own her 
 dress? Did it own her'/. In building my house, I 
 allowed at one time the lumber to own me. because 
 it was not delivered in time, and I worried over it. 
 I was owned by my two second-hand window sashes, 
 because they were delayed three days on a freight 
 train. I feel many things owning or trying to own 
 me now. So soon as they usurp my mind, and I 
 commence worrying ahoiit them. I know they own 
 me. When 1 am hurrying and worrying to finish 
 my lien-coop by tomorrow night, that hen-coop owns 
 me. When I don't care " a darn " whether the hen- 
 coop is finished this week or not. I own the hen-coop. 
 I once saw a man whose house was burning, and not 
 insured, sit down and enjoy the conflagration and 
 village uproar, and whistle. •• What can't be cured 
 
 must be endured.*" That man owned the house still. 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 RELIGION IN OUR WORK. 
 
 The obstacles I have to encounter in building and 
 running my single-guest hotel, are aoi so much of the 
 outside as in myself. I am generally in too great a 
 
 hurry. I insist on things being done before they are 
 done. I fix my time in which things shall be done, 
 and am very impatient when the Almighty insists on 
 his time for doing them. 
 
 Why should so many acts of my life be to me irk- 
 some and uncomfortable ? Why is dressing, when I 
 arise at morn, an unpleasant and hurried task? Why 
 should I pitch on my clothing as if a fire were threat- 
 ening my house? 
 
 Why should starting the fire in my stove be such 
 an irksome task? Why may I not arrange the kin- 
 dling wood carefully, not to say reverentially, put 
 some mind on it, and dispose it in such fashion that 
 when ignited, it shall burn to best advantage ? May 
 there not be a sinful way and righteous way of mak- 
 ing a tire ? Are not our faculties given us by the 
 Creator to be used to best advantage in every act? 
 
 & 
 
 y 
 
 Does real religion indorse carelessness ? Should not 
 religion be a matter permeating, imbuing, and in- 
 fluencing every act in life ? Why do I bestow two 
 or three times the strength necessary in pulling on 
 my shoes, and tire myself as much as by an hour's 
 
 27 
 
28 
 
 work, when a Little patience, a little skill, a Little 
 mind thrown on the adjustment of the fool to the 
 .shoe, will make it Blip on bo much easier"/ I arise 
 sometimes exhausted, even at the fresh day's com- 
 mencement, from a five-minutes' tussle with these 
 shoes, all through sheer stupidity. I have expended 
 on them, through this impatience, a certain amount of 
 strength which might, if carefully used, have brought 
 me pleasure. Is not this ;i sin'/ Who gave nie this 
 Strength? Is the pulling on of shoes a matter all 
 outside the pale of religion ? 
 
 Look at my clothes in this room. Flung about 
 wickedly, disposed unrighteously, two places for 
 every one article, and the only place for it where it 
 happens now to be. Is this religion*/ Why am I 
 often so long dressing in the morning*/ Because 1 
 cannot find a BOCk? Where is it found, after a ten- 
 minutes' search*/ Behind my trunk or behind my 
 bed, where, last night, I impiously flung it. disre- 
 garding tin- injunction, " What thou doest, do with 
 all thy might." But I flung it with all my might — 
 somewhere. Is that the application of the text*/ 
 May it not mean that in pulling off and disposing of 
 that Mick. I should for ever so little time have l»e- 
 stowed on it all my might of care and attention, so 
 that I could, to a certainty, have put my hand on it 
 in the morning, and saved that ten-minutes' strength, 
 used iii looking after it. for other uses? How vast 
 is th< gate of force I wast-' through thes* 
 
 called trivial neglects. Worse still, the slovenly act 
 has become the fixed habit, tin* second nature. I am 
 appalled in the endeavor to reform to find that it 
 
■Mi 
 
 extends down to the tying of my shoe-strings. I find 
 it cropping out when I put coal in the stove, or water 
 in the tea-kettle. I pour the coal in irreverentially 
 and carelessly. Some goes into the stove, some on 
 it. some over it on the floor. So with the tea-kettle; 
 1 pour some water in the vessel and more or less out, 
 because I insist on regarding it as an irksome act. 
 It is one I wish to be through with as quickly as 
 sible. I make it a sin. because I refuse to bestow 
 on the pouring, care and attention. The sin brings 
 its punishment in the very doing. The punishment 
 is the sense of pain, through impatience. It is pun- 
 ishment, too, with compound interest, for I must be 
 at the additional labor of picking up my needles>lv 
 scattered eoal, or wiping up the tea-kettle's slop-over. 
 More strength is wasted. What though I " profess " 
 ten thousand religions, shall I e\ev be happy if I keep 
 on in this way? What says the apostle: ''Let all 
 things be done decently and in order." Is the filling 
 of stoves with coal, or tea-kettles with water, outside 
 the bounds of " all things to be done decently, and 
 in order?" Is it not the Creator's coal? Is it not 
 his water ? Is it not, in a sense, the Creator's tea- 
 kettle? Is not the earth's the Lord's, and the ful- 
 ness thereof ? How am I using all these gifts of the 
 Lord's ? Do I yet know how to use them ? 
 
 What am I after on this planet ? Happiness. Very 
 well. How is it promised? By serving the Lord. 
 May not the Lord be served in the performance of 
 the so-called trivial acts of life? Yonder on my table 
 are my few unwashed dishes. Shall I allow them to 
 remain in that fashion, offending my eye, through 
 
30 
 
 a ? [fi imt cleanliness nexl to erod- 
 Liness? But in what fashion and frame of mind 
 
 shall I cleanse them? shall I hurry and scrabble 
 through the performance? Shall I make it a duty 1 
 <>r a pleasure? shall I cleanse that plate with the 
 
 same care and attention I would bestow on painting 
 a picture, were I aide to paint 7 Shall I feel a cer- 
 tain sense of gratification, when, through my efforts, 
 it appears once more a (dean plate'/ Is not this 
 worship'/ rs worship pain, or pleasure ? What 
 the apostle'/ "Rejoice evermore!" Why not re- 
 joice, then, in making a plate (dean? Or shall I 
 wash it with fretting, hurry, impatience, and curses, 
 Berving the devil while I wash, leaving dabs and 
 specks of dried egg yolk on the rim, and finally wip- 
 ing it half washed, and soiling unnecessarily my 
 wiping towel, all serving as the little ways and means 
 to contribute further to my unhappiness? 
 
 Why have I no appointed place for my wash-ri 
 Why does that lone, lorn, lost wash-rag, always lying 
 about, always in the way. always to he put some- 
 where out of the way of something else, and where it 
 doesn't belong, why has it become an eye sore? 
 Why each time that I regard it, does it give me pain ? 
 Why does it lie a weight on my brain? Because I 
 am a sinner. Because J am too lazy to set apart a 
 lew minutes' time, and appoint it one certain, defined, 
 convenient place. Because I refuse to allow my re- 
 ligion to include that wash-rag. Because I am ••de- 
 spising the day of small things." Because I will sin 
 and fall from grace daily, in not. by that wash-rag. 
 doing •• things decently and in order." Now. indeed. 
 I know why I am the " chief among sinners." 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 THE CARES OF MY WORLD. 
 
 Despite all I can do, the " cares of the \\ orld " will 
 invade the house of refuge I have built for myself 
 in this Jersey swamp, of which a very large portion 
 are not worth being cares at all. They run thus: 
 
 Whether I shall have my leaky roof covered with 
 tin. or cover it myself with tarred paper or oil-cloth ; 
 whether I shall put up some more shelves in a cer- 
 tain corner, for what purpose I don't exactly know ; 
 whether I had better for next summer buy the 17.50 
 handsome nickel-plated oil-stove, or a common tin 
 one. or no oil-stove at all : whether I shall buy a hoe, 
 or borrow one of my neighbor; whether I shall plant 
 corn or potatoes ; who will care for my chickens and 
 pigeons when I go to Boston : whether I shall have 
 time at the barber's to get my hair cut, before the 
 train starts for town ; whether this spring, I shall 
 buy a seven or nine dollar pair of pantaloons; 
 whether, after all, I had, or had not, better hold on 
 to the old spring overcoat ; whether I shall buy a 
 six-dollar umbrella, or make a sixty-five-cent one an- 
 swer ; whether I shall have toast for breakfast, or egg 
 and toast ; whether, in a thousand things of every- 
 day thought, which I am indeed ashamed to tell 
 any one else, I shall or shall not, or could or should 
 not, or might or might not — all these thoughts, plans, 
 
 31 
 
speculations, wishes, anxieties, whims, notions, great 
 and small, needless or necessary, often come in a 
 crowd and mob my brain, within the space of half an 
 hour, while I am trudging from the swamp to the 
 station, while Deity is doing his best to amuse me, by 
 the splendors of a sunrise. 
 
 Then how] travel back and forth on this can 
 the world track : how time and again I return to the 
 same old care, anxiety, plan, whim, or speculation; 
 how, rather than dismiss any one of this crowd of 
 importunate intruders, not one-tenth of whom I can 
 do justice to or dispose of. I allow myself continually 
 to l>e bored by them: how I give evasive answers 
 and deal out indecisions, instead of deciding at once 
 and for the day: how I say. "I'll see how I 
 about the new broom when I get to the store." or 
 "Maybe I'll net a new spring overcoat and maybe I 
 won't," saying to the demand. ** Call again pie, 
 which it does three minutes afterwards: and how I 
 will persist in seeing my hens unfed, uncared for. and 
 starving, when I am in Boston. 
 
 Possibly, -Martha's mind was " cumbered with much 
 serving"" in a similar way. It may not matter what 
 the serving is about, whether a pot-lid of eighteen 
 hundred years ago to be scoured cleaner, or the pro- 
 jected pantaloons of 1884. Possibly. Mary "chose 
 the better part." not in slighting her employments, 
 whatever they may have been, but in refusing to be 
 mobbed and usurped by them. I am never secure 
 against invasion and assault from these care-. Y.- — 
 terday I went to the city in a serene and complacent 
 frame of mind. It was the first genuine spring day 
 
38 
 
 of the year. The elements were in their gentlest mood. 
 I followed their lead. I walked Leisurely up Chambers 
 Street, had my boots blacked by an Italian novice, 
 who evidently did n't know his trade, fell momentarily 
 indignant at the miserable apology for the ••shine" he 
 put on them, repented thereof, called up charity and 
 consideration for the poor fellow, trying to earn an 
 honest living, put myself in his place, felt better, paid 
 him, walked off with a pair of boots unequally 
 polished, congratulated myself on my goodness, filled 
 myself up with spiritual pride, boasted to myself that 
 I was a good fellow, and not as the hard-hearted, in- 
 considerate sinners all about me. Men went by me 
 full of business cares, doubts, and fears, working, 
 scheming, planning, rushing, as is their daily wont, 
 their faces tied up in hard, financial knots, their neck- 
 ties awry, from lack of time to adorn properly them- 
 selves, their legs going with all the might of their 
 bodies, their minds hurrying their legs, and goading 
 those members ever into a quicker trot, their whole 
 souls and beings absorbed, apparently, and captured 
 by the "cares of the world." I said to myself. "I 
 am not as one of these sinners. I am above these 
 things ; I am not to be waylaid and captured by the 
 c cares of the world.' I am contented, happy, and 
 rich in the enjoyment of the hour." 
 
 " Let him that standeth take heed lest he fall." 
 Of course I was mistaken. I did not know my- 
 self ; I never did. I have been trying these forty-nine 
 years, to get acquainted with that individuals inside 
 of me. I have time and again imagined I knew him 
 through and through, and found myself mistaken. 
 
M 
 
 Some iu'\v feature, some new fault, or some old fault 
 in a oew dress, is ever cropping out. I think some- 
 times there are half a dozen fellows wrapped lip in- 
 side of my skin, each with his peculiar whims, cranks, 
 
 notions, vagaries, desires, and appetites, and each 
 demanding, like sailors in port, a "day's liberty ' 
 shore. I despair of ever getting acquainted with the 
 whole menagerie. 
 
 Serene, complacent, and thus imagining myself 
 beyond the ••cares of this world," with naught to do 
 but enjoy creation, and ••rejoice evermore" with the 
 apostle. I was suddenly seized with a desire to occupy 
 the remaining hour of my proposed stay in the city, 
 by going for a trumpery mahogany, brass-bound 
 writing desk. I had left at the loom I occupy occa- 
 sionally in town. I have no need of this box in my 
 swamp retreat. I don't know exactly what to do 
 with it. It would have been perfectly secure at the 
 room in the city. I shall probably, next winter, be 
 obliged to lug it back, from New Jersey t<> New 
 York. It was a passing fancy of mine, or that of 
 one of the other fools inside of me. It was not only 
 a fancy, but also one of the "cares of the world." 
 It captured me. bound me. hurried me to the City 
 Hall elevated road station, drove me up the stairs 
 like mad, to catch a train, and drove me out again at 
 the other end of the road. It rushed me. all tangled 
 up in a mob of other prisoners, more or less enslaved 
 by the ••cares of the world."' on the up-town South 
 Ferry train. Arriving at ray room. I found 1 had 
 half an hour less than I had counted on forgetting 
 back in time to take the half-past three afternoon 
 
:',:> 
 
 train, which carries me to my swamp. There was no 
 real necessity that I should have taken that particular 
 
 train, save the necessity of whim. Thai was another 
 needless •• care of the world." Nothing would have 
 been damaged, nobody would have been hurt or dis- 
 appointed, and all creation would have remained in 
 statu (fiio had I taken any one of the many trains 
 running to the swamp after half-past three. Impa- 
 tience and hurry now possessed me. I " tore round." 
 In wrapping up the box, I could find no twine. I 
 rushed down three long stairways, and to the grocer's 
 to get some, rushed up again, of course, wrestled 
 with the desk, and in tying it, hurriedly made it, 
 thereby, my foe, putting obstacles continually in my 
 way. I scratched my fingers against the brass 
 handles, perspired, swore internally, was angry with 
 everything, boiled with fret and fume, broke the strap 
 by which I intended to carry it, soiled my clothes, 
 lugged it out and to the elevated road station, 
 climbed the wrong stairway, waited ten minutes for 
 a train, which, when it came, was bound to Harlem, 
 instead of the City Hall; lugged the accursed thing 
 down the up-town stairs, and up the down-town 
 stairs, waited more uneasy minutes for another train, 
 got to Chambers Street five minutes too late, and 
 found myself wearied, out of temper, and with two 
 hours of time on my hands, and twenty pounds of 
 writing desk, until the starting of the five minutes 
 past five afternoon express. 
 
 Wk Let him that standeth take heed lest he fall." I 
 had fallen — fallen from grace, tempted by a lure of 
 the world, and an imaginary one, at that. I was rich 
 
36 
 
 just before the thing tempted me — rich in having 
 for the time nothing to do, and plenty of time to do 
 
 it in: rich in a contented mood and a quiet spirit ; 
 rich in caring for naught save what was then and 
 there going on outside of me, before my eyes, and 
 inside of me, as my eyes jotted these goings-on down 
 in my brain: Is not this wealth ? Can my brother, 
 Jay Gould, of whom all men. or nearly all men, 
 through sheer envy, speak so ill — can he enjoy more ? 
 Do millions in hank insure a contented spirit? But 
 is money alone at the bottom of the "cares of this 
 world"? There was no money in that writing-desk, 
 and I expended at least three dollars' worth of 
 Strength, thought, and anxiety over it. Do the 
 "cares of the world" embrace ball dresses not 
 finished in time, ostrich feathers out of curl, gilt 
 binding worn off of prayer-books? Do the cares of 
 the world ever enter a church sadly in debt, a church 
 needing a new coat of paint, a church with a rickety 
 steeple, or a worn-out minister, who will not take the 
 hint that his flock have long ceased to "call " him? 
 What business is this of mine? Have I not all I can 
 do, and more, to resist the cares of my world? Do I 
 not almost daily, when I think myself one that stand- 
 eth, suddenly find myself toppling over, and falling 
 from grace ? 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 
 THAT HIGH SHELF. 
 
 In building a house and planning its internal ar- 
 rangement, especially where it is a house of but one 
 room, and I alone do all the living in it, I am led 
 into the study of having everything so situated that 
 it can be reached with the least possible outlay of 
 time and strength. A man wants to hold all the 
 strength which nature gives him. Strength means 
 enjoyment of life, and in the daily acts of life it pays 
 to regulate its expenditure by as rigid a system of 
 economy as would govern a man in a foreign country, 
 when reduced to his last hundred dollars. When 
 I go tired to the civilized house, time on time have I 
 sought long for my slippers, and found them at last, 
 thrust far under the bed by the chambermaid, or put 
 in the recesses of some closet. Consider the force 
 used up' in hunting for those slippers. It's one's 
 very life. Hunt the slipper, under these conditions, 
 becomes a serious matter. Yesterday I reduced the 
 height of my washstand six inches ; because, when I 
 wash face and hands. I want to sit down. I want to 
 do it seriously, carefully, reverentially, and get some 
 enjoyment out of it. Why must I stand on my feet 
 before the washstand, and so expend force uselessly'/ 
 Who contrived these washstands that require people 
 to stand before them? Probably somebody who 
 
 37 
 
38 
 
 deemed this Lavatory process only a matter of neces- 
 sity, of personal duty, and an irksome piece of busi- 
 0688. Should this be so? Why should not every 
 
 art in life, DO matter how trivial, be made one of en- 
 joyment ? What is the source of ennui, and weary 
 waiting lor time to pass. 1 > 1 1 1 this slurring over and 
 hurrying through of so many of life's so-called trivial 
 affairs'/ How can a man praise his Creator, and all 
 his works, when he is making a hard job out of some 
 requirement of his body, which is said to he the 
 "dwelling of the spirit"? Isn't it a kind of sacri- 
 lege? 
 
 I find in general household arrangement a tendency 
 to cause the greatest outlay of strength with the 
 least profitable results. In small family kitchens, the 
 pots, pans, and other cooking utensils will he some- 
 times kept in a closet fifteen feet from the stov 
 range, and so disposed therein, that half a dozen 
 articles must be moved before the one wanted can 
 be taken out. Things are hung up near the door, or 
 near the ceiling. The worker must stoop or stretch 
 like a giraffe, to reach the desired object. Tons of 
 human strength are lost daily in the aggregate, 
 through high shelves. Perhaps you may have noticed 
 that when any article is placed on a shelf higher than 
 the average human head, it stays there a long time. 
 And why? Because yon shrink involuntarily from 
 looking for anything placed on a high shelf. You 
 feel the irksomeness of the act in your bones. 
 Thousands of things that people want, and have long 
 been looking for. and wondering who took them, or 
 where they've gone to. are now lying peaceful and 
 
89 
 
 dusty on the high shelf. Did you ever observe how 
 troublesome an article becomes in your kitchen, or 
 your bedroom, thai you have no use for at present, 
 
 and DO place for, and which is always lying round in 
 the way? It may be a book, or an empty paper box 
 you brought home some costly trash in from a shop- 
 ping foray, or a satchel, for which you have no time. 
 and are too lazy even to find a certain place for. You 
 find it always on something you want. You take it 
 off. and put it on something else you will want in 
 about five minutes. You are bothered by the con- 
 founded thing, yet you hardly know it is that which 
 bothers you. 
 
 It's the thing always to be moved out of another 
 thing's way, and then put in the way of some other 
 thing. Perchance, if you hang it up, you hang it 
 over two or three other articles — garments on 
 clothes hooks, male or female garments, as your case 
 may be. You will be sure to want one or more of 
 these garments next, and then off comes the satchel 
 without " fixed habitation" from that hook, and on 
 another, and over more things, of course. Finally you 
 get out of patience with it, and sling it up on the 
 high shelf, and wonder, when you want it next week, 
 where it has gone. Surely these things are so. I have 
 suffered myself from them most of my life, and all for 
 cause of having so few fixed places for anything, 
 and for having so many unfixed things in every other 
 thing's place. 
 
 Maybe you are a great statesman, or a great law- 
 yer, or a great man of some sort, or think you are, 
 which amounts to the same thing, and is just as good 
 
40 
 
 in the end. You think these matters I am talking 
 about, too trivial for your notice. Yon are BO far 
 
 above them. Hut you know you have, when it is 
 all summed up in a Lump, spent hours on hours, if 
 not days, hunting for your penknife, or lead pencil, 
 hunting first in one breeches pocket and then in the 
 other, and next going through your vest, and then 
 your coat, and hack to the breeches pocket again, 
 and this always at some critical and important junct- 
 ure. Was it not then that all the strength of your 
 mighty mind was absorbed and poured out, not on 
 the plan whereby you expected to move the world, 
 but in wondering, fretting, and stewing over the loss 
 of that knife, pencil, or spectacles, which you found 
 a few minutes later, under a sheet of paper? 
 
CHAPTER X. 
 
 A PLACE FOR EVERYTHING. 
 
 One of the greatest troubles in my house, is the 
 endeavor to carry out the law, "A place for every- 
 thing, and everything in its rjlace." I am afflicted 
 with a tendency to have two, three, sometimes a 
 dozen, places for the same thing. Mine over my 
 domestic utensils is still an incompetent governor- 
 ship. I appoint places for things, but forget the 
 ] daces. 1 hang my frying-pan on six different nails. 
 Again, I bring in things, as helps, to the domestic 
 economy, and do not appoint them places at all. A 
 cup, a spoon, a rag, a bottle, even a tack, with no 
 tixed habitation, is sure to be in the way of some 
 other article, perhaps a dozen articles, and hence 
 comes to be in a chronic state of rebellion against the 
 household peace. 
 
 The more things with no set places, the greater the 
 war, and the harder it is to put down the rebellion. 
 There is one particular spoon, an iron cooking spoon, 
 between which, and myself, a lively quarrel has been 
 going on, for the last two weeks. Half a dozen times 
 have I given it a fixed place, and then forgotten the 
 nail on which it should hang. The result is, it hangs 
 everywhere. When not hanging everywhere, it is 
 lying around everywhere. It is a culinary Ishmael. 
 It has no fixed use. I have forgotten what 1 did 
 
 41 
 
4^ 
 
 Bet it apart for. I( is now a tramp in the house. 
 There is an empty glass jar in a similar state of 
 vagrancy and rebellion. 
 
 I have Dot given it any occupation, or any fixed 
 station. Consequently it is forever wandering over 
 the house, now here, now there, and in more or less 
 difficulty with all the peaceful and orderly jars, 
 
 w Inch have a business to look after, are minding their 
 
 business, and want to be let alone. 
 
 One cause of this trouble is my tendency to 
 and accumulate all soils of things, lor which, at the 
 time of getting, I have no defined use. J have a. 
 wonderful and covetous eye. 1 am, when in town, 
 always seeing things, and saying to myself, "That's 
 a good thing to have/' It may be a tub, a table, a 
 teapot, a cup, a tin pail, a second-hand chair, a car- 
 pet, anything, everything. "A good tiling to have." 
 Have for what? J don't know. I refuse to press 
 that question home. I dare not. I evade, at such 
 times, my more thoughtful and considerate self. If I 
 see him coming, I run round the corner. The fact is, 
 1 want the needless thing simply for the pleasure of 
 getting it. It is an instinct for accumulation horn in 
 me. Perhaps I was once a magpie, and revelled in 
 heaps of old hones, rags, aixl scraps. I bring my 
 treasure home, which I have bought only for the 
 pleasure of buying. Then comes the trouble. It 
 must be cared for. It must have a place made fur it. 
 It must be washed, or dusted, or moved. Or it may 
 get broken, and bring grief to my soul. It must in 
 some way occupy some portion of my mind, and in 
 such occupation it is certain, at some time or other, to 
 
43 
 
 demand some portion of such mental strength as 
 
 nature lias given me. 
 
 The article I have no use for, becomes almost im- 
 mediately a castaway, a household pest, and vagrant. 
 It must in any case be " stored" — otherwise put in 
 confinement. Jails of this description may be found 
 in thousands of cellars and garrets, where the broken 
 chairs, and tables, the old pots, pans, and old carpets. 
 and all. are criminals and useless burdens on some- 
 body's mind. 
 
 There is a heap of these castaways in a corner of 
 my room. A basket I have no use for, a large tin 
 box, a small one, a pile of old papers, a pot-lid bereft 
 of its pot, an onion which has joined this disorganized 
 rebellion, two potatoes, now alternately freezing and 
 thawing, a cast-off pair of pantaloons, an old satchel, 
 a lamp-shade, which I am keeping for the day when 
 its affinity, a new lamp exactly its measure, shall 
 come to join it ; and in the crevices of this pile, are 
 bits of rope, string, rags, nails, and tacks. That pile 
 gives me a qualm every time I look at it. 
 
 Because the heap is not only in that corner. It 
 lies also on my mind. It is in my brain. It weighs 
 heavily there. So do the tramp spoons, cups, and 
 jars, about the house. It would be more profitable 
 to destroy them. I have a trunk half full of old 
 clothes. What ami keeping them for? Economy. 
 To wear them out some time or other. Meantime, 
 they are wearing me out. Three or four times a 
 week do I visit that trunk, to look for something 
 which may or may not be there, and in that looking, 
 in rummaging, and turning over those old clothes, I 
 
44 
 
 spend many vexatious minutes, and no small amount 
 of strength. The question is, "Are they worth it?* 1 
 I lift a pair of old pantaloons out of that trunk 
 twenty-five times a year, lay them on the floor, lay 
 them l>ack again, do the same to an old vest, ditto to 
 
 a linen duster I haven'1 worn for four years, and 
 may never wear again, ditto to three or four elianges 
 of under-clothing which are in an enfeebled and 
 
 doubtful condition : and alter spending all this time 
 and strength, I shall eventually throw the articles 
 one by one away, or open at intervals a minute crack 
 in my stingy heart, and give a coat to a beggar, who 
 will pawn it for beer, while I return home and hug 
 myself for my generosity, in so disposing of a thing 
 which annoyed me ; or I may sell the lot to a pedler, 
 and lumber my house with his cheap trash in exchange. 
 Had I not better hold an inquest now over these un- 
 used articles, and throw away, or give away, all that 
 I have no use. or can see no use for? Shall I not. in 
 so doing, clear my mind of a load, as well as the 
 trunk? I want to get all these articles not needed 
 for the immediate future, off my mind. When off, 
 perhaps better things may come in. 
 
 The moral I draw from this strictly for my own 
 use (believing that all morals are the better for being 
 home-made, and for home use) is. never to have 
 more things in sight (ornaments excepted), than I 
 have use for some time within the next fortnight. 
 
 But shall the moral stop here with me"/ How 
 much useless lumber of fact, opinion, event, dates. 
 and the like is there in my mind which I have no use 
 for now, and may never have? 
 
45 
 
 Is there a day coming, when it may be said, "Suffi- 
 eienl for t lie day is the knowledge thereof"? Musi 
 I. to be wise, know every possible Fact, event, and 
 opinion, perhaps false, in advance? 
 
 How much and how many of all these daily events, 
 incidents, persons, things, and minutiae of life gener- 
 ally is it best to hold in one's mind? How much is 
 it profitable to recollect? How much is it profitable 
 to forget ? 
 
 What if I knew the names of all the rivers in the 
 world, their length, the principal mountains, and 
 their heights, the names of all islands, capes, lakes, 
 and seas, the boundaries of all empires, kingdoms, 
 states, counties, townships, and election precincts? 
 Well? I am valuable as a walking register, almanac, 
 encyclopaedia, and time-table. 
 
 Did you ever notice that the people who are 
 crammed with facts, who can tell the beginning and 
 end of everything, where it comes from, how it is 
 made, where it is kept, and where it is going to, who 
 are peripatetic knowledge-boxes, rifles set with hair 
 triggers, shooting off fact and information at the 
 least touch, and dangerous for this very reason, to 
 approach, are apt to be the people lacking in execu- 
 tive ability, and with all their so-called knowledge, 
 are generally found occupying subordinate positions? 
 Is it because their brains carry too great a weight of 
 tilings which are of no use to them at present, and 
 leave no strength for the employment of other facul- 
 ties? Is it really necessary that I know everything, 
 or anything, until a time comes that I require such 
 knowledge? When I own a horse, and he falls sick, 
 
46 
 
 it will be time for me to find out where the horse- 
 
 doctor lives. Bui I do not own a horse now, and 
 the horse I do not own may not he sick, and I don't 
 know where the horse-doctor lives, nor do I care to 
 burden myself in finding out, or my memory after- 
 wards, with the effort to recollect his address. 
 
 I have seen those rough, illiterate fellows, who in 
 the usual sense M had no education," and regarded 
 with reverence a man who could quote a Latin sen- 
 tence, taking contracts for building grand loads over 
 the Sierras, and carrying them out, employing thou- 
 sands of men, provisioning them, and using the brains 
 of educated engineers, and other craftsmen as they 
 would tools. When they wanted a fact, or a tool, or 
 a man skilled in a certain calling, they went for the 
 article, secured it, used it, and when finished dropped 
 it. 
 
 I don't need two pot-lids for one pot. One will 
 be in the way. I don't want to wear three pairs of 
 pantaloons at once, necessary as are these articles. 
 Shall I go on putting joint on joint to my stove-pipe, 
 stove-piping Pelion on Ossa, length on length, till it 
 pierces high heaven, because it's a good thing to 
 have a stove-pipe? How much of my youthful book 
 cramming at school has been extra stove-pipe knowl- 
 edge? What has it really profited me to know that 
 Columbus discovered America in 1492? Did it ever 
 get me a situation, or into good society? Did it re- 
 fine me? Did it make me more moral, or honest? 
 Did it improve my digestion'/ Did it recommend 
 me as a good, reliable person, to any human being'/ 
 Could I travel on this choice bit of history? Could 
 
] get ten rents credit on the strength of it? Did it 
 make me a better judge of human nature/ 
 
 What, after all, has it been to me but a useless 
 joint of historical stove-pipe, taking needless strength 
 to keep it from being blown over'/ I low many 
 thousand years, if the earth lasts so long, and there 
 are people on it, will it be necessary for the child to 
 learn that Columbus discovered America in 14 ( .»2? 
 Besides, in after years, I found that even this joint 
 of stove-pipe was unsound. Columbus did not first 
 discover America. I read that the Northmen did, 
 ral hundred years before. Then the Indians 
 found the continent before the Northmen, and it may 
 yet transpire that the Egyptians did. 
 
 1 am willing to be amused by all these histories, 
 records, traditions, speculations, and theories. But 
 to make of them serious subjects for stud}', to feel 
 eompelled to remember them, to run panic-stricken 
 to history once a year, to ascertain if it really was a 
 date known as 1492. when Columbus rediscovered 
 America ; to feel myself such an ignoramus for not 
 remembering how those four numbers should stand 
 in line, seems to me something like laying in extra 
 stove-pipe joints, pot-lid covers, and dust-pans, when 
 one may answer the required purpose for years. 
 
 Is the mind a magazine, a rag-bag, a closet under 
 the stairs, to be filled full of odds and ends of infor- 
 mation? Or is it a mirror, to be polished so that it 
 shall reflect in itself all that is, more and more 
 clearly? And if so, is the polishing process to be 
 like the cramming process? 
 
CHAPTER XI. 
 
 A TUSSLE WITH A TREE. 
 
 I imagined it would take me about half an hour 
 to put up some boxes, for the accommodation of the 
 bluebirds, amid the branches of the magnificent oak 
 
 which stands in the rear of my house. 
 
 This oak is the pride of my estate. It is erect, 
 lofty, symmetrical, dow in its fullest vigor, a temple 
 
 not built with hands, more marvellous in construc- 
 tion than any palace ever erected, and, in my brother 
 man's estimation, good chiefly for firewood or rail- 
 road ties. 
 
 In the endeavor to place the bird-houses on it, I 
 find that perversity dwells among its branches. Or 
 perhaps, its desire is not to be meddled with in any 
 way, — a feature of strong character, and marked 
 individuality, whether in men, women, or oaks. 
 
 I wanted to put the boxes on the oak, about twenty 
 feet from the ground. I erected a ladder against the 
 tree. The tree refused to allow the ladder to 
 solidly against its massive trunk. Whichever way 1 
 directed that ladder, it fell against small, but stout, 
 branches, stout as steel springs. These fought the 
 ladder, and warded it off against too near approach. 
 
 I tried to insinuate the ladder between these 
 crabbed, obstinate, little branches. They resisted 
 intelligently all such tactics. Where the ladder's 
 48 
 
49 
 
 edged in a little on one side, a cat's daw of a branch 
 managed to catch it on the other. Meantime I 
 myself, the human, moving machine at the ladder's 
 foot, was expending much force in these vain efforts. 
 For it was an old, and very heavy ladder — a lionse- 
 painter's ladder. 
 
 I saw that I must cut these branches off. I could 
 not reach them from the ground so to do. Nor could 
 I saw them off by getting on the ladder, as it leaned 
 against them, since to do this might be to saw myself 
 off. in a sense. The axe failed to cut them off, be- 
 cause I could not get in a position to deal an effec- 
 tive blow. I had recourse to a hand-saw. I would 
 saw from the top of my step-ladder. 
 
 Posting the step-ladder at the foot of the tree 
 proved another difficult operation, for the ground 
 was uneven, and it was necessary to level off a place 
 to erive the base a secure hold. 
 
 At this time, it occured to me that I was a long 
 way off from placing those bluebird boxes. Every 
 move thus developed and necessary in this under- 
 taking, seemed to carry me farther from the aim first 
 sought — that of nailing the boxes to the tree. I had 
 commenced with the endeavor to place a ladder 
 against the trunk, found mind and body intercepted 
 by those obstinate branches: had left the branches, 
 and now found myself at work with a pick and 
 shovel on the ground. I thought to myself : " I won- 
 der how far I must travel away from those boxes in 
 this fashion in order to get them. Is this one of 
 those affairs in life, seemingly so easy of accomplish- 
 ment, really so difficult, which looks as if it could be 
 
50 
 
 done in a day, and which may require years/ At all 
 
 events, the affair is assuming the aspect of a sort of 
 game, Or rather Combat, between myself and this 
 tree, and I 'm going to drop all hurry and anxiety to 
 place the boxes, and see which of ns. myself or the 
 tree, are t<> he musters of the situation. 
 
 The Step-ladder sided with the tree, and was 
 
 unreasonably particular in getting a level base, now 
 toppling as I stood on it. over en this side, now on 
 that, in a decrepit, helpless soil of fashion. It was a 
 
 striking example, in its seeming efforts to overturn 
 
 me. of what a friend calls "the total depravity of in- 
 animate things." 
 
 At last I mounted the ladder, and commenced op- 
 erations with the saw. on branch number one. The 
 branch being green, and full of sap, the saw stuck, 
 and hung in an obstinate manner. Being on the 
 top board of the step-ladder, my footing was shaky 
 and uncertain. I sawed, worried by the thought of 
 a possible broken neck, or leg. and experienced great 
 wear and tear of mind and body, in consequence. 
 Branch number two required a change of location for 
 the step-ladder, and another secure level for its base. 
 So did branch number three. By the time the three 
 branches were off, I found myself forgetting the 
 original intent of all this work, and even wondering, 
 at times, what I was working for. 
 
 The branches were at last out of the way. and all 
 seemed plain sailing. I raised the heavy ladder 
 against the tree. It rested securely against the trunk. 
 I mounted it, with one of the boxes in my hands, got 
 two-thirds of the way to the ladder's top, heard some- 
 
:,l 
 
 thing crack ominously, and found thai the left Ladder 
 upright had a diagonal split running through it. was 
 threatening every instant to pan. and thai my neck 
 was in greater danger than ever. I descended rapidly, 
 
 but carefully, from the ladder. Another instance of 
 the total depravity of inanimate things. 
 
 There was nothing to do but repair the ladder. 
 The placing of the bird-boxes on the tree, had re- 
 tired farther in the distance than ever. 1 said then 
 to myself: "I wonder where this undertaking will 
 carry me, ere it is finished. What new thing shall 
 I find necessary to incorporate into this job? Per- 
 haps it may bring me to the repairing of my hen-coop. 
 It may take me to the city, to get some needed 
 article. It may carry me to Europe. I may be 
 obliged to consult with lawyers, and jurists, all 
 through some indirect operation or development, 
 growing out of this bluebird box business. It has 
 already cost me two and one-half hours' labor, and I 
 expected to accomplish it in thirty minutes.'' But I 
 am now prepared for war. I will devote the whole 
 day to this undertaking; perchance two whole days. 
 
 I repaired the ladder carefully, nailing braces both 
 within and without the broken upright. I placed it 
 in position, and mounted it, carrying a bird-box with 
 me. Arrived at the ladder's top, I found I could not 
 climb the tree to the spot where I desired to nail the 
 box. with the box in my hands. So I went down 
 the ladder again, and placed the box on the ground. 
 Then I went up the ladder so far as it reached, and 
 thenceforth took to climbing. More obstacles pre- 
 sented themselves. Branches got directly in the 
 
:>-2 
 
 way. Twigs scratched my lace, and tried to put out 
 
 my eyes. Bits of rotten branches and dry bark dis- 
 lodged, and fell into my eyes. There was more cut- 
 ting away to be done. I descended the ladder for 
 
 my hatchet, got it. and brimmed a road up the tree. 
 All. as I supposed, being ready, I descended again 
 for the box. and remounted. It was necessary to 
 take with me a hammer, a gimlet, and some nails. 1 
 tied the hammer about my neck with a cord, and put 
 the nails and gimlet in my vest pocket. Arrived at 
 the place where I would nail the box, I found it 
 necessary to use the hatchet. Common sense, or a. 
 lew seconds" thought, might have taught me that as 
 the hatchet would probably be needed again, it should 
 have been stuck by the blade in the tree. No. I had 
 pitched it from the tree on the ground. So I went 
 down the ladder again for the hatchet. 
 
 These continual ascents and descents began now 
 to alarm me. They seemed endless, and at the pres- 
 ent rate 1 could vaguely see more and more in the 
 dim distance of futurity, before the boxes were 
 fastened. 
 
 I finished with the hatchet, and was turning the 
 current of my thoughts on the hammer, when, that 
 instrument being tied, so to speak, by the neck, sud- 
 denly as I leaned over a branch, turned a somersault, 
 slipped through the knot, and fell straight to the 
 ground. It fell wonderfully straight through the 
 branches, and on leaching the ground, lay there with 
 a dull, sullen, "come-down- from- there-and- pick-me- 
 up" expression. 
 
 I did not come down immediately. I leaned over 
 
53 
 
 the branch and swore at that hammer. Bui it did 
 
 not rise. Then it occurred to me how amusing all 
 this might be to any third party, who had nothing to 
 
 do but look on and see the performance. I said : 
 M Why should I not be the third party ? " But I re- 
 minded myself that the third party had nothing to 
 
 do but sit down and be amused, whereas I had all 
 these perpetual ascensions and descensions to make, 
 besides being amused. The contract was too large. 
 I could not be thoroughly amused, and do all the 
 work besides. So I descended again, with what 
 patience I could summon. I picked the hammer up. 
 I wanted to ring its neck. But what comes from 
 ringing a hammer's neck? Naught save the neces- 
 sity of buying a new hammer. 
 
 The hammer was picked up, as it desired to be. 
 Again I climbed the ladder. In the midst of an ap- 
 parently speedy despatch of these labors, a new 
 trouble presented itself. The tree had changed its 
 tatties, and called a new ally to its aid. 
 
 This ally was a hen — one of my hens. My back 
 door and only door had been left open. This hen 
 had entered, was on my table consuming the remains 
 of my breakfast, and threatening destruction, with 
 her awkward legs and claws, to my crockery. It is 
 this particular hen that annoys me in this way more 
 than all the rest. While they are off foraging in the 
 held, she hangs round that back door, bent on thiev- 
 ing and plunder. 
 
 I cried out " shoo ! " from above, several times, to 
 no purpose. She wouldn't u shoo." She paid me no 
 respectful attention whatever. She knew well enough 
 
54 
 
 she had plenty of time to clear out of the house be- 
 fore I could gel down from the tree. I made her 
 several threatening remarks. She cocked up one < 
 winked at me in a contemptuous manner, and calmly 
 went on pecking. I threw several twigs in the house, 
 to n<> purpose. I descended the ladder, and wrath- 
 ful 1\ drove her out. She went out as hens generally 
 do from any pent-up place, by the longest possible 
 way, with great risk to window-panes, and fragile 
 articles, from her fluttering wings, and with a great 
 cackle and outcry, as if she deemed it an outrageous 
 proceeding on my part, thus to disturb her while 
 peacefully engaged in converting the breakfast scraps 
 into fresh eggs for my own use. which cackle and 
 outcry was re-echoed by the head roosters of her 
 community in the held, as if they, too, concurred, and 
 heartily seconded her opinion of me. 
 
 So relinked. I climbed once more the ladder, and 
 put myself in position for nailing on the box 
 work of some difficulty, since I was obliged to make 
 my body conform to the shape and requirements of 
 the tree, and the various divergences and contour of 
 its trunk and branches. Effecting one position. I 
 found that in it I could not strike a blow with the 
 hammer, through the interference of a hostile little 
 limb. Jn another, I could not pull the nails from my 
 vest pocket. I found myself for the work immedi- 
 ately in hand, constantly lacking in the requisite num- 
 ber of legs and arms. It seemed to me I could have 
 kept then and there employed, six or eight more of 
 these members. I realized then the great advantages 
 for such kind of work possessed by certain monkeys. 
 
;>;> 
 
 who could have slung themselves airily and grace- 
 fully from a branch, by their strong and flexible ex- 
 tension of vertebra 1 , leaving all the arms and legs 
 free for other uses. I was so reflecting when I heard 
 a tiny, modest drop to earth. It was the gimlet, for 
 which I had immediate use. It had fallen from a 
 vesl pocket. A few nails gently pattered after it. 
 Then there was wrath. But to what purpose? Gim- 
 lets on the earth respond and rise no more to exple- 
 tives than do hammers. The gimlet would not come 
 to me. I went by the old and usual route to the 
 gimlet, wondering, as again I wearily climbed the 
 ladder, if patience to work out one's salvation must, 
 like eternity, be infinite ; and if one's charity must be 
 stretched to cover this total depravity of inanimate 
 hammers and gimlets. 
 
 I nailed the boxes in position. All now seemed to 
 work smoothly. I finished the work, and went down 
 the ladder, as I supposed, for the last time. I sur- 
 veyed those four boxes with pride and admiration. 
 I took awav the ladder, and lusrffecl it afar to a distant 
 corner. I resurveyed the boxes, and discovered that 
 one of them was hanging by a shred of bark, shaking 
 with the breeze, as the nail had not penetrated to the 
 wood of the tree, thus proving again the total deprav- 
 ity of inanimate things. 
 
 I would not succumb. All my pride and stubborn- 
 ness was now aroused. I had ceased to regard the 
 placing of those boxes on the tree as of the first im- 
 portance. This, with me, had been superseded by the 
 desire of winning in this game, or contest, with my 
 splendid but stubborn oak. I re-erected the ladder. 
 
refastened the box, and then waited to see what new 
 ugliness on the oak's part would come. But none 
 came. I had conquered. 
 
 During the week, several house-hunting birds have 
 inspected these a] >art incuts. They seem difficult to 
 suit, and make no choice. 
 
 I thought, when I commenced writing this story, 
 there was a moral concealed in it somewhere, or hang- 
 ing to its skirts. Now that I have finished it. I can't 
 find any. I deem it more kind and considerate to 
 Leave the reader to find his or her own moral, and 
 apply it where it is needed. 1 have in the past too 
 much erred in going round slapping moral mustard 
 plasters on people's skins, regardless whether they 
 wanted them or not. 
 
 And no bluebirds, nor any other birds, would ever 
 live in those box 
 
CHAPTER XII. 
 
 A MOB OF THE MIND. 
 
 There are forty things in this house of mine 
 which •• want doing," as we say. 
 
 The tea-kettle leaks, and should be in the tinman's 
 hands. The floor needs scrubbing. The invalid 
 rocking-chair has a broken back. There are holes in 
 the heels of sundry socks. A jar of preserves has 
 soured on my hands, and needs cleaning. Various 
 shelves need dusting. A lath is off the hen-coop. 
 My plans for a garden are gradually maturing, and 
 coming to the front. One of my hens wants to "set." 
 
 There are two letters to write, and also some wood 
 to cut, as well as water to bring, and some bread to 
 be ordered from the baker. Besides which, I want, of 
 all things, a rhubarb pie, and there's a broken win- 
 dow to be mended. There is no end to the wants ; 
 and I can plan more work for my hands in five min- 
 utes, than I could do in a month. Besides, my lamp 
 wants filling ; and where has that knife gone to ? 
 And the wood has n't come. 
 
 Each of these wants represents an individual, with 
 a demand for time, care, and work. Collectively 
 >ing upon me, they form a mob, and prevent me 
 from doing anything. At times this whole mob rushes 
 clamorously upon me, each yelling his demand, and 
 insisting on being served first. I have endeavored 
 
58 
 
 to accommodate them, by serving them as fasl as pos- 
 sible. This endeavor was a failure. I satisfied none, 
 did nothing well, and did no justice to them or my- 
 self. I endeavored to mend the hen-coop, while my 
 mind went back to the kitchen, where some corn 
 bread was baking. Mind being off my hammer, that 
 descended <>n a finger instead of a nail, tearing off 
 skin and flesh. Then I smelt the corn bread burn- 
 ing. It was burning. Two things cannot occupy 
 the same place at the same time. Body in the hen- 
 coop and mind in the kitchen mixes things up; and 
 out of this maladjustment I got a bloody linger, a 
 burned corn cake, an illy repaired coop, a lo- 
 serenity, and a consequent loss of strength. 
 
 I tried to write a private letter. My mind strayed 
 off nn the broom lying on the floor. I rose to put it 
 in its properplace, and kicked over a pot of red paint. 
 Another mixture of mind and matter ensued. 
 
 The next day the same mob came clamoring about 
 me. I then arose, equal to the emergency. I said. 
 "This row must be stopped. I'll stop it first in my 
 mind. Though chaos reign in the house, though 
 everything wants doing, there shall be but one thing 
 done at a time, by as much of this mind and body I 
 carry about me as I control. Out with ye all! 
 Begone ! till I can make up my mind which of you 
 is a must <»r not — a mere want or a pressing 
 need, a thing which my comfort requires for the hour. 
 or a thing which can be put off till tomorrow with- 
 out damage." 
 
 The mob simmered down to a few individuals. 
 Beyond cutting some wood, bringing some water, and 
 
59 
 
 two or three other " chores," there was nobody but 
 oould afford to wait. 
 
 I attended to these "musts," and then applied my- 
 self to one of the unnecessaries. 
 
 This one was my garden. I am cultivating a few 
 plants, native to the soil, which I transplant from the 
 Deiffhboring thicket. I want to give these floral 
 aborigines a show, and see what they will come to. 
 I transplanted four very small young cedars, and in 
 the middle placed a very pretty wild running vine, 
 whose common name I don't know, and whose botan- 
 ical name I don't want to know. 
 
 S< i far so good. I was working leisurely and pleas- 
 antly, feeling it rather a holiday business than other- 
 wise, when suddenly a vast ambition came into my 
 mind, to make a series of circles and walks of a 
 number of young cedars, and adorn a much larger 
 Bpace with other plants. Ere I was aware of it the 
 ambition grew, possessed, and governed me. I was 
 hurried by it, strained by it, and tired by it. I found 
 myself rushing to and from the grove with trans- 
 planted plants, digging furiously, and setting my 
 mind far ahead of my work. In fact, one of the 
 mob of wants, desires, plans, whims, aspirations, call 
 them by what name you please, had captured me, and 
 was making a slave of me. I sat down and said, 
 M This row must stop, too, and order shall reign in 
 Warsaw. I will not be commanded by all or one of 
 you." 
 
 I abandoned the great gardening ambition, and con- 
 fined it to its original proportions. Then I felt bet- 
 
♦ ;<» 
 
 ter. That row was stopped. But all are not 
 stopped. This empire of mind has long been badly 
 governed, and something like insurrection still exists 
 in it. These old iocs are always at the gates, ready 
 to rush 10 at the least opening. 
 
CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 PAINTING THE HOUSE. 
 
 I am now engaged in painting the interior of 
 my house in various colors. Some might call it daub- 
 ing. I call it frescoing. I have a right to dignify 
 my own style of ornamentation by the best name I 
 can find. 
 
 I am also painting the furniture, and all the do- 
 mot ic appliances I can lay hands on. My pails, 
 kerosene-can, and coal-scuttle are now of a bright 
 vermilion. The general color of walls and floor is 
 red. The beams are to be blue, or any other color 
 handy, when the time comes to paint them. 
 
 I like a good deal of red in the inside of the house, 
 because it seems or feels a sort of warm color. Some 
 would call my taste gaudy. Be it so. Perhaps I am 
 in the gaudy phase of existence. So may be some 
 other power, when it paints the rose, or the peony, 
 the apple, or the sumach cluster of berries. 
 
 I do not make work of this painting. I paint at 
 odd intervals, when the inspiration is upon me. It is 
 a pleasant way of filling in certain little chunks of 
 time, which otherwise might be tedious. The paint- 
 shop occupies one certain shelf, and is always ready 
 for business. A mixture of oil, turpentine, and color- 
 ing matter is all that is needed. 
 
 The advantage of painting in this way, lies in the 
 
 61 
 
62 
 
 Liberty] enjoy to paint as I please, or " paint out" 
 as I please. J paint for fun ; when it becomes work. 
 I stop painting. I get the same pleasure out of this 
 style of painting, that the child docs in coloring 
 yellow the picture of the battle of Bunker Hill, and 
 dyeing the fallen Genera] Warren a marine blue. 
 It's innocent recreation, even if you call it childish. 
 Besides, I care little whether you call it childish 01 
 not. I might say that your painting your expensive 
 house by hired painters, or the laying out of your 
 grounds by hired gardeners, or the stabling and care 
 of your horses by hired grooms, or the keeping and 
 sailing of your yacht by hired sailors, involved only 
 another system of playthings for you, the man. the 
 k - child of larger growth." Only it is doubtful if you 
 get as much comfort out of these as I do from a 
 dollar's worth of paint and paint-brushes. Still, I 
 hope you do, and more. I have a right to enjoy my- 
 self in a " childish" fashion, and I hold a childish 
 pleasure to be better than a matured pain. 
 
 I observe that the work, be it what it may. that is 
 best done, is that in which the doer becomes most 
 absorbed, heart, soul, mind, and body, and then it 
 ceases to become work at all. It is play. When the 
 true artist finds himself " working " on his picture, 
 he will lay aside his brushes, and wait till he van 
 again make play of his occupation. The divinity of 
 art doesn't work at all : no more than the race-horse 
 '•works" when endeavoring to pass his rival, or the 
 bird ••works'' in its joyous song, or flight. Cart 
 horses "work." So do men, women, and children. 
 compelled through circumstances to use brain, bone, 
 
63 
 
 and muscle, from sunrise to sunset, and who fag on 
 through tin 1 Long afternoon hours, until all interest, 
 pride, or pleasure in their occupation is gone, because 
 there is no strength left to keep it up. 
 
 Having for seven years swung a pick in the mines 
 
 iA California, I know something practically about 
 
 work. Picking and shovelling dirt was fun for me 
 
 till eleven or twelve o'clock in the morning. In the 
 
 afternoon it soon became work. I noticed that my 
 
 "pards" also took longer rests in shovelling after 
 
 three or four o'clock, and that the flight of the sun 
 
 toward the western horizon was watched with much 
 
 greater interest after that hour. Why? Because 
 
 their occupation had ceased to be play, and body and 
 
 soul, too, were crying out for rest, and a chance to 
 
 recuperate. The fire in the blood was nearly out ; 
 
 the lamp of life was burning lower, and Nature was 
 
 asking that these lamps be taken home and refilled. 
 
 Of course my paint flies around at times, specking 
 
 and staining various articles. There are flecks of 
 
 red on the marine blue, and vice versa. The floor 
 
 has received more or less involuntary painting, and 
 
 sundry utensils show the marks of my colored April 
 
 shower. 
 
 I do not allow such trifles to trouble me. If I did, 
 my house would soon be as full of trouble as it is 
 now full of paint stains. I think that one of the 
 first steps on the road to heaven is the ability to 
 cease to be annoyed by trifles. Did I give way to 
 the bent of the evil inside of me, I could soon become 
 as much annoyed by a paint stain, or a grease spot, 
 or a broken saucer, or any other occasional house- 
 
64 
 
 hold irregularity, as I would be by the Loss of a 
 friend. I can allow these troubles so to grow on me 
 
 as to absorb and swallow up a great deal of my 
 capacity for enjoyment of other things. I desire and 
 
 aim to paint as smoothly as I can: to Leave no "holi- 
 days'* on the wood, as the sailors call the bare marks 
 left by a slovenly ship painter. lint when I do make 
 them, as often I do, I am not going to be over- 
 whelmed by them. They are mistakes and errors. 
 They are my mistakes and errors. Being mi] 
 have a right to them, and all the annoyances, or ex- 
 perience, or wisdom, through such experience, they 
 may bring me. And any other mistakes I may make 
 in life, great or small (and I expect to make many), 
 I hold in the same regard. 
 
 Or rather, I preach this doctrine to myself, but do 
 not always practice it. It is so much easier to preach 
 than to practice. 
 
 I find great use and enjoyment in my house paint- 
 ing, other than that conferred by the exercise. It 
 affords in doors a continual change of scene and 
 color. I don't want to paint the whole interior at 
 once. I would not be able to enjoy the whole at 
 once as in detail. It is, so to speak, too big a meal — 
 of paint. But when, in a leisure moment. I cover a 
 square yard of the house red, I enjoy the change of 
 color that it brings, and the contrast with the bare 
 board still unpainted. This makes of my painting a 
 prolonged and continual feast. It gives variety. 
 I>veiy day. through these small efforts, I enjoy a con- 
 tinual change. Being at full liberty to do as I pL 
 I can. when one set of colors tires me. change them 
 
65 
 
 for another, in the same gradual way. As for finish- 
 ing this prolonged holiday of painting, and sitting 
 
 down and saying. " I am done.*' I want no such 
 consummation. I intend painting on indefinitely. 
 There is, for me, a large moral hidden in this matter. 
 I leave it to the reader to pick out for him or herself. 
 
 There is also another pleasure in this occupation, 
 because I feel at full liberty to make my house look 
 as frightful as I please, without caring what people 
 will say. Having no neighbors or callers here, I am 
 entirely free from the tyranny of " what people may 
 say." This is a luxury worth about forty dollars a 
 month. 
 
 I am only copying Nature's process out of doors. 
 She is painting in all the colors of the early spring 
 foliage. The fields are showing their first faint 
 tinge of green. Day by day it deepens. There 's a 
 blush of " Indian red " in the woods. That comes of 
 the first burst of the elder buds. The other colors 
 are gradually coming in and blending together. But 
 Nature is the great, grand painter who frescoes the 
 whole land, save where it is dotted and blotted with 
 the big cities, where trees are so much left out, 
 because they are in the way of trade. 
 
CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 BARROWFUL OF "BLUES." 
 
 It was a rainy day. very black, very wet, the 
 ground a muddy sop. the sky a dull. Leadenish-hued 
 dome. It gave me a tit of the "blues." I raked up 
 certain old griefs oul of tin- ashes of the past, bor- 
 rowed some oew troubles out of the future and put 
 them all under the powerful microscope of a morbid 
 imagination, which magnifies tin- awful about a 
 thousand times, and diminishes the cheerful, when 
 applied to it. in a similar proportion. 
 
 I notified the world that it was an unfit place to 
 live in. a "vale <>f tears," a shame and disgrace to its 
 Maker. In about an hour. I had arranged for myself 
 a large and commodious hades, where, on every side, 
 naught was to be seen hut the wrecks of all earthly 
 hopes, lying about in dust and ashes, and every ideal 
 a will-o'-the-wisp, leading to quagmires of disappoint- 
 ment. 
 
 Finally, all this became so horrible that at last it 
 occurred to me that it was about horrible enough. 
 It was more than I could bear. I said. " I am satis- 
 fied. I've got all I want of this. Why is this black- 
 
 , anyway? The sun was bright yesterday. 
 was I. That same mid is shining somewhere today. 
 I think I have got about the same mind I had yea 
 day. Isn't it capable of enjoying, as then ? Whence 
 
 66 
 
.17 
 
 this difference in my views of life? Then I was on 
 
 1 terms with the world and myself. Is fchis -loom 
 
 owing to a few billion drops of water Palling from 
 
 above? Is it due to the sombre hue of the clouds, 
 the dirty sop under foot, and the general deadness of 
 the landscape, which in a short time will have all 
 its new spring verdure? Am I to be so downcast 
 merely by a color?" People are depressed or 
 cheered by surroundings. Nobody goes into a dark 
 cellar to spend a cheerful evening. 
 
 That bird in the tree yonder sings merrily enough, 
 despite the rain. How does he keep up his spirits in 
 such weather ? If the bird can throw off this gloom, 
 so ought I. 
 
 Among the people inside of me is one who, at 
 times, advises and suggests. He is not a favorite of 
 mine, since he is apt to intrude his monitions when I 
 least want them, possibly because it is then they are 
 most needed. 
 
 " If you will allow me," said he, " to make a sug- 
 gestion. I don't want to intrude advice on you. I 
 know it 's disagreeable. I hate it myself. It has a 
 preachy-preachy, reproving, I-am-better-than-thou sort 
 of twang, and it' s hard to take. Besides, there 's so 
 much of it in the world. Everyone seems to carry a 
 dose in his pocket — not for himself, but for others. 
 Still, I would like to make this suggestion to you, 
 and please hear it, just as you hear that bird singing. 
 
 " You know wdiat you Avant. That 's a gain. You 
 want to get your thoughts out of the gloomy rut 
 they 're now running in. It 's a big step for you to 
 know what you want in your case. Many people 
 
.;s 
 
 afflicted with the 'blues' do not make any effort to 
 get rid of them. They allow their minds to travel 
 over and over the same gloomy road. They allow 
 their moods to command them, instead of trying to 
 command their moods. You know that you want to 
 get your mind out of that mood. Now wheel that 
 barrow to the wood-shed: wheel it as carefully as 
 you can : make a game of wheeling it : wheel it 
 
 through the Stubble field so as to expend the least 
 
 possible Labor in the wheeling; wheel it so as to 
 
 avoid holes, and rocks, and miry places; put your 
 whole mind on the harrow, and when you yet to the 
 wood-shed, pile it very carefully with wood; pile 
 the sticks nicely, so they will not fall off: pile them 
 with attention, precision, and daintiness : then wheel 
 the barrow hack to the house, with the same care : 
 cany the wood into the house; don't fling it down 
 by the stove, as you would throw a snake off your 
 person, but put all your mind on piling, so as to make 
 a neat, creditable pile, and see then if a part of your 
 honors, at least, are not cast out of you." 
 
 "This is something like prescribing those seven 
 baths in the river Jordan to that scriptural genera] 
 for his complaint," I thought. "However, the baths 
 cured him. I '11 try the barrow cure." 
 
 I wheeled the barrow a short distance, made a 
 game of it, in getting the greatest amount of go out 
 of the vehicle, with the least amount of push, 
 avoided ruts, stones, and the deeper hollows. I did 
 feel somewhat lighter. I seemed to be wheeling it 
 out of hades. But all at once, involuntarily. I 
 relaxed my vigilance in fixing my brains on the bar- 
 
69 
 
 row. I ran in a rut, — two ruts. The barrow in 
 one : niv thoughts in that old, gloomy nit of reeol- 
 lection and anticipation. "The bright days of yore 
 that would never come back." The " What 's the 
 use of living, anyway ? " The absent never to 
 return, or if returned, to return changed. The 
 k * What 's it all for? " The fleeting years, the growing- 
 old, the "ah me!" and the "heigh-ho!" and "such 
 is life" — that remark with which so many close 
 up some sad story, and which seems to say, " Well, 
 it \s the best life and the best world we 've got, any- 
 way, and mighty poor affairs, both of them, at 
 that." 
 
 " There you go," said my monitor, " off in the rut 
 again ; never mind, it 's habit. Your mind has been 
 so long in this habit, it runs into it involuntarily. 
 Your doors open so easily into your hades, hinges all 
 oiled, bolts ditto ; they turn so easily. The others, 
 opening to the brighter rooms, are all rusty, from 
 want of use. Got lots of work before you to set this 
 thing to rights. You must try again, and fail, and 
 keep on trying, and fail and fail and fail, and try and 
 try and try, and fail and try, and try and fail, a long- 
 time. No other way out of it. Sure cure in time, 
 but a long time to make the sure cure. It's all a 
 part and parcel of this " working out your salvation." 
 When you get practice enough to keep your mind 
 fixed on a certain subject for, say ten or fifteen 
 minutes, why, then it will stay fixed of its own 
 accord, until you want to change it." 
 
 I put my mind on the work again, and wheeled 
 about half a dozen steps. Then my pet grievance 
 
70 
 
 got into the barrow. I forgot the wheeling. The 
 grievance thus worked on my mind: "If So-and- 
 so had "lit said this and that. I know I was partly 
 
 wrong. But, by George! I never went so far i 
 Bay, or to think, or to do — " 
 
 •• 5Tou're off again," said tin- adviser; "you're not 
 attending to that harrow." 
 
 I buckled to the barrow. "Gracious," went my 
 mind. -Can't I put this mind of mine on one par- 
 ticular thing for ten seconds? What a weak thing 
 it is. to be forever slipping off the work right in 
 hand."* 
 
 ••You're off in another rut." said my monitor. 
 ••Think of the work, and not of your mind's weak- 
 ness." 
 
 •• I was thinking how much truth there is in what 
 you say," I remarked. 
 
 The reply was : "Don't think even of that! 
 Think of nothing but the barrow. -Stick to the har- 
 row. Work at the barrow. Work out the salvation 
 of the hour and the minute on that barrow." 
 
 I wheeled a dozen steps more. Then the pet fear 
 came before me, black as a thunder-cloud, and my 
 mind reveried gloomily thus: "It'll all go w: 
 Everything does. Just my luck. I've put myself in 
 this position. What can I say? What — " 
 
 "Barrow ! Barrow ! " called out the adviser. 
 
 " Hang the barrow ! " J thought. " I want to think 
 over my troubles in peace, and without being dis- 
 turbed. Besides, what a ridiculous idea to put all 
 dne's mind on such an insignificant thing as a wheel- 
 barrow, and neglect the great concerns of life. 
 
"Great fiddlesticks !" said the monitor. "Lei me 
 tell vou that the great concerns of life are what you 
 call the little concerns. It's the little neglects that 
 make the great accidents: the pebble on the rail that 
 may throw the train off the track: the arsenic left on 
 the provision shelf that's mistaken for baking powder, 
 and poisons the family: the ladder that you're too 
 lazy to adjust properly that tumbles and breaks your 
 the mouthful of food that you shovel into your 
 mouth as if it were corn into a hopper, that gives you 
 an indigestion, and makes you unfit for business or 
 pleasure : the tack you recklessly throw on the floor 
 runs into your foot and gives you the lockjaw ; the 
 •t' in writing you neglect to cross, and carelessly 
 make with a loop instead of a straight line, so that 
 your word spells 'lie' instead of "tie,' and gets you 
 into an awful entanglement with your best friend." 
 
 •* That's the reason you never could learn to waltz. 
 You put your mind, or tried to, on half a dozen steps 
 at once, instead of one at a time. Pretty mess you 
 made of it: jumbled and tumbled them all up to- 
 gether. You know your dancing-master gave you 
 up in despair — said he never could make you dance 
 lower down than your waist — never could get any 
 dance in your legs, because you wouldn't or couldn't 
 get your brains into them." 
 
 So my monitor went on scolding, while I. again 
 forgetting my barrow, went maundering off into a 
 possible trying interview with a certain person which 
 will probably never transpire, saying to myself : " I 
 shall just go, and when I do see him I'm going in a 
 gentle, mild form, and forgiving frame of mind. I'm 
 going to fix up a mental state in advance." 
 
72 
 
 Said the monitor: -You've do bus ring up 
 
 mental states in advance. You've no bos 
 take any thought just now what you'll say or do 
 days hence. Your business now Lb to wheel that 
 harrow. Put all your strength on that, and let the 
 future take eare of itself. Do have some eonsider- 
 ation for your pour anus and legs. Put your mind 
 into them, and not send it away a hundred mil 
 more, or distribute it over forty objects, plans, whims, 
 wants, and purposes for tomorrow. Let the morrow 
 and the future take eare of themselves, and you take 
 eare of that barrow." 
 
 But I couldn't. I failed. I couldn't wheel that 
 barrow more than ten >tep> but that. some miserable 
 thought, whim, trouble, or anxiety would slip in and 
 unseat what I call my mind. I couldn't -beat the 
 game." Still I do retain a faith in its curative prop- 
 erties for the blues, if long enough persisted in. 
 
CHAPTER XV. 
 
 OMEGA. 
 
 And after all the house proved a failure, so far as 
 my permanent happiness was concerned. When it 
 was finished, and my corn was coming up, and my 
 liens were in laying order, and three had commenced 
 setting, and the morning-glory vines had commenced 
 peeping in at the front windows, I commenced to 
 mope. I could not get the happiness out of my 
 hermitage that I had anticipated. I had imagined 
 I could live happily alone with nature, and largely 
 independent of the rest of the human race. I 
 couldn't. I don't believe anybody can. Nature 
 herself taught me better. I found that the birds 
 went in pairs and in flocks; that plants and trees 
 grew in families; that ants lived in colonies, and 
 that everything of its kind had a tendency to live and 
 grow together. But here I was, a single bit of the 
 human race, trying to live alone and away from my 
 kind. The birds and trees were possibly glad of my 
 admiration for them, but they said : " You don't 
 belong to us. You shouldn't try to belong to us. 
 You belong to your own race ; go join them again ; 
 cultivate them. We live our own lives ; you can't 
 get wholly into our lives. You 're not a bird, that 
 can live in a nest and on uncooked seeds ; or a squir- 
 rel, that can live in a hole in a tree ; or a tree, that 
 
 73 
 
74 
 
 ran root itself in one place and stay there, as yon "vc 
 been trying to do. A hermit is one who tries to be 
 
 a tree, and draw nourishment from one spot, when 
 lie's really a great deal more than a tree, and must 
 draw life and recreation from many persons and 
 places. A bear is not so foolish as to try and live 
 among foxes; neither should a man try to live en- 
 tirely among trees, because they can't give him all 
 
 that he must have to get the most out of life." 
 
 So I left my hermitage, I presume, forever, and 
 carted my bed and pots and pans to the house of a. 
 friend, perched on the brink of the palisades opposite 
 
 Tinker's. 
 
THE 
 
 WHITE*CROSS*LIBRARY 
 
 Is a MONTHLY system of publication, showing how 
 results may be obtained in all business and art, through 
 the force of thought and silent power of mind. 
 
 SUBSCRIPTION RATES: 
 $1.50 per year; single copies, 15 cents. 
 
 NUMBERS ISSUED FROM MAY, 1886, TO MAY, 1887. 
 VOLUME I. 
 
 You travel when you sleep. 
 Where you travel 70/1 en you sleep. 
 The process of 7-e-embodiment. 
 Re-embodiment universal in nat- 
 ure. 
 The art of forgetting* 
 7/07O thoughts are born. 
 
 The law of success. 
 
 How to keep your strength. 
 
 Consider the lilies. 
 
 Art of study. 
 
 Profit and loss in associates. 
 
 The slavery of fear. 
 
 What are spiritual gifts. 
 
 "Your Forces, and how to Use Them." 1st Vol.; 
 
 consisting of the 13 numbers of Vol. 1, bound. Price^ $2.00. 
 
 NUMBERS ISSUED FROM MAY, 1887, TO MAY, 1888. 
 
 VOLUME II. 
 
 Some laws of health and beauty. 
 
 Mental intemperance. 
 
 Law of marriage. 
 
 7 he God in yourself 
 
 Force, and how to get it. 
 
 The doctor within. 
 
 Co-operation of thought. 
 
 The religion of dress. 
 
 The necessity of riches. 
 
 Use your riches. 
 
 The healing and renewing force 
 
 of spring. 
 Positive and negative thought. 
 
 "Your Forces, and How to Use Them." 2d Vol.; 
 
 consisting of the 12 numbers of Vol. 2, bound. Price % $2.00. 
 
 F. J. NEEDHAM, 
 
 22 Tremont Row, 
 Publisher White Cross Library. BOSTON, MASS. 
 
 REMOVED TO 
 Star 
 
SKETCHES. 
 
THE CALIFORNIAN'S RETURN 
 
 OR, 
 
 TWENTY YEARS FROM HOME. 
 
 You went to California in 1852. Yon return 
 home, for the first time, in 1872. Your home, in an 
 eastern state, is Dozeville. 
 
 For the last twenty years, yon have persisted in 
 regarding Dozeville as still possessed of all the 
 attractiveness it had for you in youth. Reflection 
 told you it must have changed. People who had 
 visited Dozeville and returned, bore back gloomy 
 stories of its dullness and monotony. But you had 
 not seen this. You could not realize it. There 
 was. for you, but one Dozeville, young Dozeville, 
 always young, because you saw it last in youth. 
 
 In day-dreams, in river and bank claims, picking 
 and shovelling up to the middle in mud, slum, and 
 water ; by your cabin door, smoking the evening 
 pipe ; on the sterile ridges of Nevada, prospecting 
 for " ledge," you have, in imagination, many times 
 visited Dozeville. You have shaken hands with all 
 Id citizens ; you have been, for a time, the newly- 
 returned lion of the place. No matter that letter 
 after letter told you how sires, and grandsires, and 
 matrons, and blooming, bright-eyed schoolmates had 
 
 77 
 
dropped off; von would sec yourself, on the first 
 Sunday home at Dozeville, standing in the village 
 church : and with what congregation could you fill 
 it. save the one you had left ? 
 
 The dream is realized ; the continent is crossed ; 
 you stand bodily in Dozeville. None knows of your 
 coming. It is night ; the train has stopped at the 
 depot. The railroad has been extended to Dozeville 
 since you left : Dozevillians were talking of building 
 this road when you were a boy. The " branch 
 thirty miles in length. They were thirty years talk- 
 ing it over. Old Dozevillians had lived and died 
 talking of it. At last, a brisk New York speculator 
 came along, and in a few months the road was built 
 
 There is a feeble effervescence about the Dozeville 
 depot when the train stops. Compared with the 
 roaring, hustling, crowding bustle of a wide-awake 
 town, it is as the languid pop of a stale champagne 
 bottle to the roar of a forty-two pounder. You 
 in a coach and are driven towards the family 
 deuce. It is a cold, clear, winter's night. You look 
 out; the wind is roaring through the leafles 
 mores : every street has its old curve: every 1 
 is in its old place. You recognize them all. as though 
 }^ou had left but yesterday ; yet a gloom seems to 
 hang about them, for you realize, now, that yon 
 not to meet this or that old neighbor, whose daily 
 coming and going from those gates seemed Bl 
 unchangeable as the rising and setting of yonder 
 moon. You have met your mother and sisters: yOl 
 have almost been obliged to prove to them your iden- 
 tity ! It was a surprise, but not exactly of the (pial- 
 
Til 
 
 itv you had hoped for. They were hardly prepared 
 to see a middle-aged man, worn by toil and exposure. 
 The last photograph von sent home, ten years ago, 
 
 implied still some appearance of youth. And after 
 a few days, sometimes after a few hours, you make a 
 discovery : you are not acquainted with your Own 
 mother and sisters. Twenty years is too long- an 
 absence : there is a great gap, a whole lifetime of 
 incident and event between you and them. You are 
 bound to a thousand Californian sympathies and 
 associations, of which they know nothing. You 
 betray them every hour. You are continually prov- 
 ing, now that you are back at the old home, seated 
 in the old arm-chair, and on the very carpet over 
 which you tumbled in your babyhood, that three- 
 fourths of your heart is back in the land of geysers, 
 grizzlies, and gold. The mother involuntarily sighs. 
 This is not the boy's heart that left her twenty years 
 ago ; it is a strange man's heart, full of hopes, fears, 
 plans, and remembrances unknown to her. It is a 
 heart recast, remodelled. It was a beardless boy 
 who left her ; from the cradle to that last parting she 
 had known his whole life ; but this is a bearded man 
 who has returned, with dashes of gray in his hair, 
 with a different manner and a different voice. He 
 brings with him the volume of tw T enty years of life, 
 but she cannot read it all at once. He shows, care- 
 lessly, a page here and there ; but it is broken and 
 fragmentary to her. Her eyes brighten when he 
 speaks concerning some event of his childhood ; 
 there she is upon familiar ground ; that seems a piece 
 of her own son. Hers, during your entire absence, 
 
80 
 
 has been the quiet Life at Dozeville, not making half 
 a dozen new acquaintances ; you have made hun- 
 dreds in the same time, and you bring them all home 
 
 with you. 
 
 There is a younger sister in the house. She has 
 held a dim recollection of you : all her lite has she 
 Longed to see the mysterious brother in California, 
 who is always writing home that he is on the eve of 
 making a fortune. She has painted an ideal of him 
 in mind, and often touched up the picture with many 
 perfections. And this. you. are the reality! She 
 will not, to herself, own any disappointment : but 
 she did suppose him a differently appearing man. In 
 a crowd, he is not the very last man she would have 
 singled out for her brother ; but he would not have 
 been the first. 
 
 The morning after your arrival you behold I> 
 ville by daylight. It is very much the same as when 
 you left; the woods, fences, and corner posts are all 
 in their old places; the vacant lots, fenced in and 
 not built upon when you left, are still fenced in and 
 vacant. A few veteran trees upon the main street 
 have disappeared. Six new houses in twenty years ! 
 One church has been moved from its former location. 
 Consequent on the change, there was great dissatis- 
 faction among the congregation ; a part seceded, and 
 joined another denomination. It was all the work i>( 
 a new minister, who had a mania for moving chun 
 wherever he was settled. This occurred seven \ i 
 ago ; you hear all about it before being in Dozeville 
 three days. The unpleasantness has not lost its first 
 lustre ; they pickle old contentions in Dozeville. and 
 
81 
 
 so keep them ready for use in winter, when things 
 are dull, and the branch road snowed up. 
 
 Dozeville and the surrounding territory seem bo 
 have shrunk. The day-journeys of your youth to 
 Long Beach and Big Pond have dwindled to mere 
 morning strolls. For years, in the mines, did you 
 tramp two or three miles, over mountain and valley, 
 to the nearest store, for your flour, beans, coffee, and 
 pork, sometimes alter a hard day's work. Dozeville 
 miles are mere parlor promenades, compared to the 
 rolling, rugged, steep miles from Mexican Flat to the 
 Long Gulch store. 
 
 There are three hundred old acquaintances in 
 Dozeville to be met and shaken hands with. All, 
 after the first greetings, make the remark, " Grow- 
 ing old, I see, like the rest of us." This, to one of 
 thirty-five, from sexagenarians, septuagenarians, and 
 octogenarians, is hard to bear. The next inquiry is, 
 " How have you been all this time ? " This is a diffi- 
 cult question, also, to find an appropriate and appli- 
 cable answer for, fifteen or twenty times a day. The 
 long-wished-for welcome back to Dozeville proves a 
 tedious operation. The apples wither in your grasp. 
 Finally, you deem it advisable to restrict the number 
 of these greetings to three per day. You court 
 retirement, and avoid more the locality of the dozen 
 stores, constituting the pulsating centre of Dozeville. 
 
 Let us read the Dozeville signs : 
 
 " William Barnes, Books and Stationery." This 
 is your first youthful playmate. Twenty years ago 
 you left him, just launched in the Dozeville book- 
 store ; he keeps it still. Then he was a ruddy-faced, 
 
82 
 
 lively young man, just married ; now he has a shop- 
 worn look of age. For twenty years he lias stood 
 behind that counter, selling primers, slates, slate pen- 
 cils, worsted, and dolls, to little boys and girls. For 
 twenty years lie has trudged lour times a day — 
 breakfast, dinner, supper, and bedtime — to his 
 
 dwelling-house, three hundred yards up the .street. 
 This, and a yearly trip to the city, for replenishing 
 the stock of dolls, slates, pencils, and primers, has 
 been his voyaging. What changes and hurry-skur- 
 ryings have been yours during these twenty y< 
 Up to Cariboo; down to Arizona: over the moun- 
 tains to Nevada : looking on the rise and hustle of 
 new mining towns; looking on them decayed, quiet, 
 and deserted, years afterwards ; living now in this 
 community, now in that, composed of keen, sharp. 
 clever men. gathered from the ends of the earth : 
 witnessing their gradual dispersion and dropping 
 away, some to new tields, some to the grave: forming 
 associations, and collecting remembrances never t<» 
 be forgotten : and through all this. William Barnes 
 has dung to Dozeville, and Dozeville has clung 
 him. and has kept stationary. 
 
 "Samuel Scoy, Attorney-at-law." Another old 
 playmate. Samuel Scoy was a very troublesome boy 
 in the neighborhood. lie does well to practice law 
 now, lor he was always breaking it in his youth. He 
 was your partner in ringing door-bells, changi: 
 and robbing melon patehes. He is now a sober man 
 of family. You are seated in his parlor. Your con- 
 versation with Samuel Scoy partakes, not of the i 
 hilarious nature of former days: somehow you can- 
 
83 
 
 not find the scapegrace of old. The satan in him 
 
 seems to have entirely died out. But the door opens, 
 and an elegant woman enters. Sam Seoy — no, Sam- 
 uel Scoy, Esq., attorney-at-law, introduces you to his 
 eldest daughter. AVhy are you surprised? You 
 might have known this. Sam Scoy was married 
 before you left home. This is Samuel Scoy, attorney- 
 at-law, with whiskers inclining to gray, and a man- 
 ner rather stern and severe ; and this is his daughter. 
 You are old enough to be the father of that self-pos- 
 sessed, elegant young woman. You never thought of 
 that before ; yet were she to visit Coyote camp, you 
 and half a dozen other middle-aged bachelors would 
 be ordering new suits from San Francisco. What 
 a steady old worker is Time ! Tadpoles will grow 
 to frogs ; infants will develop into elegant women. 
 And this is Miss Scoy, the daughter of Sam Scoy, 
 whom old Tom Bangs once gathered up by the coat 
 collar and the baggy portion of his pantaloons, and 
 chucked off the end of Little Neck wharf, for tam- 
 pering with his eel-pots ; and you are nearly old 
 enough to be a grandfather. Now you begin to feel 
 your years. 
 
 You are invited to a Dozeville evening party, 
 Being a single man, you are deemed eligible for this 
 sort of thing. There are present a score of old 
 schoolmates' daughters, just like Miss Scoy. But 
 Bill Barnes and Sam Scoy are not there. They 
 renounced such parties years and years ago ; they 
 are old family men. They would as soon be caught 
 playing marbles on the sidewalk. You prepare to 
 go, and attire yourself w r ith all the scrupulousness, 
 
84 
 
 the care, and the anxiety of youth. You go, and 
 find yourself a worn, out of place, aged bovine, amid 
 a crowd of calves. The young ladies. Misses Scoy 
 and Barnes, charming olive-branches of your school- 
 fellows, survey you curiously. They have often 
 
 heard their parents speak of yon. You were young 
 
 and ga} along with their sires. That period, by the 
 glass in which they survey life, was ages and 
 ago, coeval with the American Revolution, or the 
 
 discovery of America, or the Hood. You are an 
 "old fellow." You are introduced to one after an- 
 other; hut there is no affiliation, as in days of yore. 
 The gap of years, crow's-feet, and straggling gray 
 hairs, lie between you and them. They listen for a 
 period consistent with civility, to the cracked old 
 love-song of this, their fathers' friend, and then fly 
 away to young Mr. Cock Sparrow, just returned from 
 his first collegiate term. Cock Sparrow was not even 
 an infant when you left. Now. you feel older. 
 More apples have withered. 
 
 It is your first Sunday at Dozeville, and you sit 
 once more in the family pew^ at the old church. But 
 the congregation seems thin. You miss many a 
 stately gray head. The elders are the young men of 
 1852. Still, the edifice is for you thickly peopled, 
 but not with the living. When last you sat 1 
 another and an older minister preached a farewell 
 and admonitory sermon to that company of young 
 men. bound for California. They sat together in that 
 pew yonder. They expected to return in live years. 
 at least, with much gold. All had sweethearts, and 
 those sweethearts expected, at the expiration of those 
 
85 
 
 five years, to become wives. Most of them sat in 
 the choir. Some o{ their daughters sing in the choir 
 today. I) nt the fathers of those young songsters 
 never went to California, and forgot the pastor's 
 admonitory sermon, while they mined, and traded, 
 and drank, and gambled, and fought, and talked a 
 language half Mexican, half English, and ran for 
 office, and died violent deaths, and were elected to 
 magnificent shrievalties worth $20,000 per annum, 
 and learned to bake their own bread, and cook their 
 own beans, and wash their own clothes. They never 
 w made their piles" in the dry diggings, and lost them 
 in turning the bed of the river, or were " broke," 
 M strapped," or " panned out " at faro ; then made 
 more piles, to be "broke," "strapped," or "panned 
 out " at monte. They never went to Kern River, Gold 
 Bluffs, Frazer, Colorado, Montana, or Nevada. They 
 remained at home ; and when those five years were 
 up, they married the girls wearied of waiting for 
 the California adventurers, but few of whom ever 
 returned ; and those who did, brought back sad tales 
 of many who remained. Thomas Spring was a bar- 
 tender ; William Dimple, a mule driver ; Jeremiah 
 Goodboy, a confirmed gambler ; and it was whis- 
 pered that Isaiah Sweetbriar, the deacon's son, had 
 been hanged in the southern mines for stealing a 
 mule. So the girls became Mrs. Barnes and Scoy, 
 instead of Goodboy and Sweetbriar. All these mem- 
 ories come crowding thickly upon you, as you look 
 on the pew where the young men bound for Cali- 
 fornia sat twenty years ago. Are not Dozevillians 
 impressed, also, by these remembrances, on coming 
 
86 
 
 here every Sunday ? No : the change has been grad- 
 ual for them. They arc not Looking now over the 
 
 wide and freshly cut gap of twenty years. They 
 
 are thinking of their dinners, of Monday's washing, 
 of the forthcoming festival for raising funds to re- 
 paint the steeple. What a lofty steeple that was 
 once ! Now the vane reaches up to the first limb 
 of the right hand " Sentinel " at the Big Tree 
 Grove. 
 
 Some of the Dozevillians hold but a dim remem- 
 brance of California's grand opening day, — the rush 
 and gold fever of 1849; yet vessels, twenty odd 
 years ago, carrying away the pick of their young 
 men, sailed directly from Dozeville to San Fran- 
 cisco. But other and greater events have since 
 transpired. California, to many of these Dozevil- 
 lians. is almost the California of thirty years ago — 
 a land remote and unknown. Some of them scarcely 
 know the existence of the Yosemite Valley or the 
 Big Trees. You are disgusted. Worse than this: 
 some of them have quite forgotten certain of the 
 young men born and bred in Dozeville, long resi- 
 dent in California. You speak of Tom Travels. 
 who was a "Dozeville boy." Half of California 
 knows Tom Travers. Here are men in Dozeville 
 who shake their heads feebly at mention of Tom 
 Travers. " Why, Uncle Abraham Travers' son, 
 next to the oldest, say you ? Well, yes, 'pears 
 if they do remember something of him." And then 
 they stop, for they are hardly certain whether they 
 do or not. It is not strange. Year after year in 
 Dozeville have they trotted around a little circus- 
 
NT 
 
 ring of life; Bitting about the same grocery stove 
 
 in winter, sitting in the same chairs in front of that 
 grocery in summer, droning over the weight of the 
 last murdered hog, or the last strange face seen in 
 the village ; reviewing all the Dozeville tattle, until 
 all other recollection is beaten and stamped out. 
 The mental horizon of these Dozevillians has settled 
 thickly just outside their little circus-ring of thought. 
 No wonder that they should forget the well-known 
 Thomas Travers. 
 
 You call on old Mr. Scott. He was old to you 
 when a boy. He lives in and on books. He has 
 travelled all over the world in books. He knows 
 California well by books. He speaks of the Yo- 
 Semite Valley, the Ca-lav-erous Grove of Big Trees, 
 and the San Joe-a-kin River. You venture to cor- 
 rect his pronunciation, but he has his own laws for 
 pronouncing California proper names, and will not 
 stay corrected by a snip of thirty-five. There is an- 
 other trial for you. Dick Harvey, the pioneer resi- 
 dent of Whiskey Flat, named by and for himself, 
 has done little in California for the last twenty 
 years, save dig, drink, dance and play poker. Dick's 
 parents reside in Dozeville. Dick was one of that 
 pewful of young men. westward bound, who lis- 
 tened to the admonitory sermon. Old Mr. Harvey, 
 Dick's father, calls on you, that he may learn some- 
 thing of his son ; he has not heard directly from 
 him for fifteen years. Dick long since renounced 
 writing home, and with it all idea of ever coming 
 home. Unfortunately, you know too much of Dick. 
 * What is he doing ? " asks old Mr. Harvey. You 
 
88 
 
 believe be is mining, and doing tolerably well. (Dick 
 lias been "doing" every one he could ••make b 
 
 raise"' from, for years and years. His best suit is 
 a gray shirt and a pair of blue jean overalls. He 
 aever comes to camp without making a disturb- 
 ance. He was once offered $50 to quit the neigh- 
 borhood and betake himself to other parts, hut 
 refused to Leave under $100.) With all this fresh 
 in your mind, you sit before old Mr. Harvey, who 
 Longs to hear something comforting from his lost 
 and never-to-be-found son. You wish that he would 
 go, because it is hard work, in answering- his in- 
 quiries, to equivocate, and squirm, and sneak, ami 
 dodge about the truth, which is not to be told at 
 all times about Dick. 
 
 One certain opinion possesses all Dozeville. It is 
 that any. man in good health, who has spent years 
 i.i the land of gold, ought to have a fortune. Vainly 
 \<>u reason, and attempt some explanation on this 
 [>oint. Vainly you talk concerning the risks of 
 mining: of the months idly spent on Pacific Flat, 
 waiting for water ; of the years employed in baling 
 the river's bed at drizzly Canon: of the ra< < 
 expensively cut through a solid granite ledge ; of 
 the flume at Split Bar, costing thousands, only to 
 be swept down stream by the fall freshets: of the 
 gravid, which did not prospect a cent to the cart load 
 when you did get into the bed of the river: of the 
 tunnel it took years to bore through the rim-rock of 
 Table Mountain; of the high prices paid for water. 
 which took all the life out of your profits in the 
 hydraulic claim at Coyote Creek; of the capital you 
 
-'.I 
 
 put into the Columbia quartz-lead, whose rock as- 
 saveil a cent per pound, and whose actual returns 
 fell a little short of a cent per ton ; of the fruitless 
 scrambles to Krazer River, to Colorado; of the un- 
 successful hunt for the Comstock extension in Neva- 
 da. All this is useless. Dozevillians have it firmly 
 rooted in their brains, that when a man goes to 
 California, it is his duty to get rich. That he does 
 not. is an indication of a loose screw in his moral 
 machinery. You cannot alter their minds. They 
 have been locked in this conviction for twenty years, 
 and the wards are too old and rusty to be turned 
 back, without danger of breaking to pieces. 
 
 You remain in your dear old Dozeville a couple of 
 months. Would you stay there for life ? Will you 
 call it your home now ? 
 
 No. no, no ! There is another land, nearer the 
 setting sun, which claims you for its own. You are 
 longing now for San Francisco, with its afternoon 
 gales, and mosaic of nationality ; for the sight of the 
 Contra Costa hills, flecked in the springtime with 
 their thousand, shades of green, and cloud, and sun- 
 shine ; for Tamalpais at eve, with avalanches of white 
 fog rolling clown its sides ; for the great inland plains, 
 walled westward by the dimly blue Coast Range, 
 eastward by the far-away snow-tipped Sierras ; for 
 the dark green chaparral, and the scent of pine and 
 balsam in the foothills, with their rich fruitage and 
 heavy laden vines. Dozeville is clear, but it is not 
 galvanic enough for you. You require earthquakes, 
 grizzlies, and periodical gold fevers. Dozeville is 
 pleasant, calm, and quiet, but it seems the calm and 
 
90 
 
 quiet of a well-kept church-yard. It abounds over- 
 much with widows, carefully husbanding the prop- 
 erty of deceased partners. It is outflanked by too 
 many rheumatic aunts, with lame backs and Dutch 
 clocks. Dozeville is dear, because it was your boy- 
 hood's home. But the lively Dozeville of your youth 
 no longer exists. The realized Dozeville of 1872 lias 
 passed away forever. 
 
FRENCH WITHOUT A MASTER. 
 
 My French teacher from East Haddam, on the 
 banks of the Connecticut River, taught me French 
 some thirty odd years ago. He Avas a good, honest 
 man. and the only reason lie was a fraud in certain 
 respects was. that he did not know he was one. He 
 made me commit some words and sentences to mem- 
 ory, and I repeated these to him. 
 
 In those days this was called " learning," though 
 I never could see how mere words committed to 
 memory out of a book, taught a man or a woman to 
 ride a horse, or sail a boat, or shoot well, or swim 
 well, or manage a primary meeting, or even plead 
 a case in plain, clear, common-sense fashion before 
 a jury, or do anything else in which brains, clear 
 sight, decision, courage, or energy were required. 
 
 However, he taught me something called French 
 in America. It was never recognized for French in 
 Paris. It wouldn't wash over there. I tried it first 
 on a French cabman. He didn't understand a word 
 I said, until I showed him printed French in my 
 guide-book, that I had been trying on him. He in- 
 sisted on driving me to one place, when I wanted to 
 go to another. I wanted to go to a certain hotel 
 mentioned in my guide-book. I showed him the 
 name of this hotel, as printed in that book. The 
 
 91 
 
92 
 
 cabman shook his head. He talked a good deal of 
 
 his French, and in a very decided manner. I talked 
 ;i good deal of my French, in a very decided man- 
 ner. As we did not understand each other, tic 
 suit finally arrived at by either party was not clear. 
 Finally I jumped into his cab. He drove off. I won- 
 dered to myself, as my hones rattled over the stones, 
 where Connecticul French was carrying me. He 
 took me to a mean-looking house, in a mean-looking 
 street. It was not the place mentioned in my guide- 
 book. I again showed the cabman the former name 
 and number in the book, lie shook his head, and 
 poured on me torrents of Gallic un intelligibility. 
 I was obstinate. He drove at last to the street and 
 house I desired, and pointed triumphantly with his 
 whip to the number of the building 1 had pointed 
 out. It was not a hotel at all. It had been a hotel, 
 but was changed into an immense clothing stoic 
 I understood then what the cabman had been trying 
 to tell me. Mine was an old guide-book, behind the 
 times and changes of the times. However, I got 
 out with my two carpet-bags and set out down the 
 street, I knew not whither. I was ashamed of my 
 ignorance. I pretended, however, so far as manner 
 went, that it was all right : that I knew where I was 
 going : that I knew what I wanted. And so I did. 
 I wanted to get out of sight and sound of that cab- 
 man. He looked at me as I walked off, and grinned. 
 I felt his grin all through me. It made my flesh 
 creep, crawl, and quiver. I knew that he knew that 
 I was trying to play a part, and he knew that I knew 
 that he knew it. I turned the first corner I came 
 
!»:', 
 
 to, walked along the streel a short distance, turned 
 back, peeped round the corner, and saw with relief 
 that the fiend and his cab had gone. I felt better, 
 breathed easier, and perspired freer. The first trial 
 was over. I was alone in Paris ; alone, homeless and 
 langnageless, with my two carpet-bags. In travel- 
 ing, it is well to carry two bags. One can be taken, 
 and the other left full of bricks at your hotel, as 
 security for your board bill, in case your remittances 
 don't come. In foreign lands, the American is never 
 cashless for any other cause than that of his remit- 
 tances from home not coming, which is always strictly 
 true. They do not come in cases, because they never 
 started to come, nor had anything or anybody to 
 start them, either. 
 
 I found a roof to shelter me at last, with a very 
 kind lady, who pitied me because I should return to 
 that barbarous United States, in her geographical 
 estimation but a cab-drive from Brazil ; who caught 
 me trying to eat my first snails raw ; who taught me 
 how to cook them, by setting the shells on the coals, 
 and so allowing the butter with which they close 
 the shell, to run down and cook the reptile within, 
 and which were to me equally tasteless, either raw 
 or cooked. As an edible, I cannot indorse the snail, 
 and think him better employed in his old occupation 
 as the symbol of laziness, and am not sure he's not 
 lazy as made out, and think he knows his own busi- 
 ness best, anyway. 
 
 I started out on my first morning in Paris, not 
 knowing, not caring, where I went. I had neither 
 guide nor guide-book. I did n't want so much to 
 
!>4 
 
 Bee what Others had seen, as what they had n't Been. 
 I was hungry. I found a restaurant. I found, on en- 
 tering, thai the meal was served on an upper floor. 
 
 I did n"t want then to go upstairs, but had no French 
 at hand which would explain why I did n't want t<» 
 go upstairs. So I felt compelled to go upstairs, t-> 
 avoid seeming suspicious. I found a long table, and 
 some folly Frenchmen seated thereat at their half- 
 past-ten breakfast. There was no written hill of fare. 
 I had relied on the written hill of fare, because I 
 could point to the things on the paper I would eat. 
 The waiter gabbled over the dishes they served. I 
 could not understand a word. 1 was speechless. 
 Forty Frenchmen were looking at me. I said at last 
 in despair, " Pommes de terre — potato 'Ida- 
 
 waiter talked and talked. I know now he was ask- 
 ing me how r I would have them served. In France 
 potatoes are served variously. How could I name 
 the style I wanted? I said simply, "potato 
 
 Potatoes — potatoes. Yet I realized the absurdity 
 of ordering a breakfast of potatoes only, when there 
 were so many other things to eat. I knew there 
 were other good things, because I saw. them and 
 smelled them to the right and left on my neighbors 1 
 plates, but I knew not their French names. I <i 
 not point to my neighbor's plate, and say. " I want 
 some of that." The waiter brought potatoes. He 
 brought them first plain boiled, in their jackets ; then 
 he brought them fried; then he brought them stewed. 
 Then a suspicion of a horrible truth commenced to 
 dawn upon me. It had been assumed that I would 
 have a potato breakfast, and of all possible styles : 
 
95 
 
 and potatoes are cooked in many fashions in Prance. 
 
 I don't know how many dishes of potatoes they did 
 bring. I did know that I was an object of curiosity 
 
 and amusement to my foreign friends present. 
 
 I ate and perspired and was ashamed, and wished 
 I was out of it. and still the potatoes kept coming. 
 Somebody called for a dish which sounded like ma- 
 rengo'. I counseled to myself, that if I called for 
 ** marengo " it might stop the avalanche of potatoes, 
 as well as the quiet ridicule of my neighbors. Pota- 
 toes and ridicule together are appetizing. I did n't 
 know what marengo would result in, whether fish, 
 flesh, or fowl. It was a sort of gastronomical lottery. 
 The real name is maringot. 
 
 I don't know now exactly what that maringot was. 
 I don't want to know. If I must eat my peck of 
 extraneous matter, ere I shuffle off my body this ex- 
 pensive suit of mortality, which is always singing- 
 out for something to put on it or in it, why should 
 I insist on a chemical analysis of all I eat ? But 
 the maringot was good, better than the monotony 
 of ever changing and diversified courses of potatoes. 
 I made it last a long time, because I wanted to put 
 off, as long as possible, my next sure exposure of 
 ignorance, when the waiter should come and gabble. 
 It was a painful breakfast. It lasted nearly an hour. 
 It gave me no good. It did give me the dyspepsia ; 
 any mental strain or misery will when you 're eating. 
 Anxiety is much harder to digest than fat pork. 
 And all this came of learning French by the eye 
 instead of the ear, of a Gaul from East Haddam, 
 Conn. 
 
96 
 
 I went to a bath-house. The attendant young 
 woman asked me whether I would have a bath sim- 
 ple or otherwise. I said simple. I was shown my 
 bath-room, sin- turned on the water, and Left me 
 without soap or towels. Then I understood, as 
 gards a hath, what simplicity meant in France. I 
 rung for soap and towels. The girl brought me pro- 
 grammes of each. There were lour kinds of soap, 
 and five kinds of towels — prices extra. In Europe 
 everything is extra. 
 
 There were head towels, ear towels, a. sheet to put 
 on the bottom of the bath-tub. and other towels. 
 
 I chose a thing called a p-e-i-g-n-o-i-r, which happened, 
 of all the list, to be no towel at all. It turned out 
 to be a hot baked linen night-gown or wrap, with 
 sleeves, and open in front. When buttoned up, it 
 was very becoming to me. It was hot. just as if it 
 had come from the oven. On coming from my bath. 
 I did n't know what to do with it, so I put it on 
 and sat in it. It was comfortable, a little too hot at 
 first in places, but soon cooled off. I had to get my 
 money's worth out of it somehow. Its real use is 
 to sit in it while you call the attendant to turn off 
 the hot water and turn on the cold. 
 
 After taking that bath I went to the station-house. 
 I went i here on a tour of investigation, and because I 
 was obliged to go there. Some people seek station- 
 houses as some people seek greatness. Other people 
 have them thrust upon them, as they have great! 
 I had this station-house thrust upon me, or rather I 
 was thrust inside this station-house. 
 
 Naturally, von wish to know why. Your curiosity 
 
97 
 
 is excited. I shall lei it remain excited. I shall not 
 tell yon. because so long as your curiosity remains 
 excited, yon are on the qui vive. That's French. 
 It means there 's something more in this world you 
 want to find out, and that, consequently, you have 
 a purpose in life. That's a good thing to have. If 
 I told you what caused my arrest in Paris, and deten- 
 tion for a night in the station-house, your curiosity 
 would be satisfied, and you might no longer have 
 a purpose in life, or something to live for. 
 
 The non-committal and unsatisfactory reason I 
 shall give for becoming a temporary, if not an hon- 
 ored guest in the Parisian station is, that I disturbed 
 temporarily the peace of the French Republic. The 
 French Republic then existed on a slender founda- 
 tion. It didn't take much to shake its foundation. 
 I was the " Not much." 
 
 My cell was furnished with a floor, a ceiling, and 
 a bench. It was as simple and primitive as Eve's 
 costume before the fall. In front of it was a French 
 soldier with a gun. I do not know whether it was 
 loaded. I know I was " loaded," though, when I 
 went in that cell. 
 
 Being " loaded," I was taken in the morning be- 
 fore a judge of some sort, examined, and discharged. 
 Not knowing the language, I don't know what 
 he found when he examined and discharged me. 
 I should like to have examined him, but couldn't, 
 as he did not speak Connecticut French. This trial 
 was nothing as compared with the one which fol- 
 lowed immediately. I had then to appear before a 
 lady I had previously married, and account satisfac- 
 
dS 
 
 fcorily, or otherwise, for my staying out all night. 
 
 I accounted otherwise, and was " found guilty." 
 But it was by 00 means all over. In France, it 
 appears they discharge you first, and try you after- 
 ward. At least so they did with me. 
 
 I don't know where I was tried. I don't know 
 when, I don't know who tried me. I don't care : 
 I know only that, two months after my relen 
 State official left a long paper at my lodgings, inform- 
 ing me of the circumstance, and the amount of the 
 tine and costs. When first I looked at the paper 
 and column of figures, I felt as if the balance of my 
 earthly life might be spent in making money enough 
 to pay this fine. On closer examination, I discov- 
 ered, that while the column of figures was imposing 
 as to length, it was very weak as to actual amount. 
 On reducing it to American currency, I found the 
 entire sum to be $4.20. Justice is cheap in France. 
 even if it is rather slow in transit. 
 
 I was then worth *4.20. and desired to pay the fine 
 immediately. I so desired, not so much from honor- 
 able and high-minded motives, as to keep the c 
 from swelling up. If they swelled, I feared in time 
 they might amount to $5, and " bust " me. 1 di 
 could find anybody who felt authorized to take my 
 fine. I went to three or four different mayors 1 
 offices. In Paris and around it there *s a mayor for 
 every ward, who has a court and a court-house, and 
 marries people and does other work. I went to the 
 Boulogne mayor's office. They would not take my 
 fine. They told me to go to Sevres. The Se 
 mayor said he was not entitled to take the line, and 
 
99 
 
 told me to go somewhere else. I went somewhere 
 
 else. It was always the same story. 
 
 You see, in France, nobody will take money unless 
 they feel authorized to do so. In this particular, the 
 French are wonderfully like us here in New York 
 and the surrounding towns. I began then to fear 
 that I might spend the remainder of my days in 
 hunting an authority authorized to receive this fine, 
 because if I didn't pay it I might never be able to 
 quit Paris, for the reason, that within forty-eight 
 hours after you enter that city, your name, age, occu- 
 pation, size, weight, complexion, are taken down by 
 an officer appointed for that purpose, and you are 
 known and booked and registered, so that you can 
 be nabbed if you 're wanted. 
 
 I went then to my landlord for advice. He said 
 to me, " Soyez tranquille." That's French. It 
 means, " Keep quiet, keep shady. Stop chinning. 
 Mind your own business, and let the French Repub- 
 lic take care of its own. If you won't run after the 
 French government, it won't run after you." I did 
 so. I soye'd tranquille. I left Paris undisturbed. 
 I left, a defaulter to the French Republic in the sum 
 of 84.20; and I know not now to what dimensions 
 it may have grown, at the rate of three cents for 
 serving repeated summons. It may amount to $6. 
 I am liable to rearrest for this cause the moment 
 I re-enter Paris. 
 
 I took French lessons in Paris of M. Charles and 
 family. We met by appointment two evenings a 
 week, and hurled murdered French and English al- 
 ternately at each other. M. Charles was a scholar, 
 
LOO 
 
 and well versed in English grammar. .But of the 
 idiom of OUT Language he knew nothing. He used 
 English wo ids with reference entirely to their signifi- 
 cation in French, just as I did French words rela- 
 tive to their meaning in English. He wished once 
 to ask me to accompany the family to a picnic in 
 
 the country. ** Sir/* said lie (he always called me 
 "Sir Mulford," for he said he must have something 
 to answer tor the invariable French prefix of mon- 
 sieur), '-Sir. will yon to go for me to dine upon the 
 herbs?" 
 
 Grass diet, I thought. Does lie take me for that 
 ancient vegetarian. Nebuchadnezzar? He corrected 
 himself instantly. "No," said he. " What a fool 1 
 am ! I mean will yon travel with me. to eat up in the 
 trees?" He takes me for a giraffe now. I thought. 
 But M. Charles once more corrected himself. Said 
 he: " No, no, 1 am a foolish to ask you to dine with 
 me like one leetle bird." You may see, at this rate. 
 it took us some time to travel over a small amount 
 of territory ; and you will recollect, also, that when 
 you learn your French mostly from translation and 
 grammar, you run the risk of making just such mis- 
 takes in conversing with a Frenchman. 
 
 M. Charles, who lived over the foundations of the 
 old Bastile, was a true French gentleman, pure in 
 thought, faithful to a bed-ridden mother. Loving, 
 faithful and considerate to his wife, who, in her 
 long black blouse, was his daily assistant in busi- 
 ness (photography), and a more loving and pleas- 
 ant family I never met, huddled, as eight of them 
 were, in four small rooms. I met others like him. 
 
101 
 
 Don't believe all you hear about French immorality. 
 Don't accept implicitly, an impression of that nation, 
 current among us for so many generations, given out 
 
 and coming from a people on the other side of the 
 channel, among whom, on a Saturday night, you 
 may find thousands of gin palaces full of boozing, 
 drunken men and women ; among whom in London's 
 east end, the drunken woman is an e very-day sight, 
 as common as the wife-beating husband. I am nei- 
 ther defending nor abusing. The French have sins. 
 So have the English. So have I. So, possibly, have 
 you. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak — 
 especially on an empty stomach, when the lord of 
 creation has to wait ten minutes overtime for his 
 dinner, and while so doing finds his wife's milliner's 
 bill three times as much as he expected, when he 
 has been fruitlessly running that morning all over 
 town, to borrow money to meet a bank obligation, 
 and just then the bungling servant girl smashes the 
 new soup tureen. 
 
 I will now for a moment become dogmatic and 
 oracular. If yon want really to learn any foreign 
 language, get its pronunciation in your ear first, 
 and before anything else. Get one, two, three words 
 of it, even before you know their meaning. Get 
 the swing of their sound. Learn it as you really 
 learned you own native tongue, when you were two, 
 three, or four years old. If you are with people 
 who talk correct English, you will talk correct Eng- 
 lish. If you are much with people who talk correct 
 French, you will in time talk correct French. The 
 ear must be educated first, and before the eye. If 
 
102 
 
 you learn to translate much French, and yon are not 
 bearing it spoken, von arc teaching only your 
 and your mental car is talking most of that French, 
 or German, or Italian to yourself, with the English 
 
 accent : and tor all talking purposes, with French- 
 man, German or Italian, yon arc worse off than 
 if you had never s.» studied at all: tor as regards 
 pronunciation, yon must unlearn nearly all your 
 errors of accent so acquired, before yon can com- 
 mence squarely, and then when yon go to France, 
 you will not he a red-handed murderer of their lan- 
 guage. Of course iii France, no matter how great 
 your blunders, they will compliment you on your 
 growing proficiency in their language, providing yon 
 pay your hills regularly. For the French arc a very 
 polite people, and I like them for so being. Polite- 
 ness, even if only on the surface, is. 1 think, more 
 agreeable than boorislmess on the surface. One of 
 my French landladies told me how they lived, dur- 
 ing the siege of Paris, on horse and donkey meat. 
 She explained or symbolized donkey to me. by 
 raising her large hands to her ears, and working 
 them donkey fashion. I understood. I tumbled 
 to her vernacular racket. Then she complimented 
 me on my rapid proficiency in French, and I have 
 no doubt afterward remarked to her cronies, that 
 the American was at home when a brother donkey 
 was raised. 
 
 After visiting the tomb of the Emperor Napoleon, 
 I told a Flench lady, with appropriate seriousness, 
 that I had visited the emperor's tambour, which 
 meant the emperor's drum. She tried to be polite, 
 
L03 
 
 but failed. She laughed in my face. I justified her 
 in bo doing, and I believe thai to this day, one 
 Frenchwoman believes thai one American believes 
 thai the emperor carried the bass drum. Friends, 
 it's a hazardous business handling a foreign tongue, 
 when you're all at sea among a foreign people, be- 
 cause you don't always know what you 've said 
 when you 've said it, and its embarrassing, when you 
 think you 've complimented a lady on her looks, to 
 rind, possibly, that you 've called her an aged chicken, 
 or words to that effect. 
 
 If you want to learn French, pitch in and talk it 
 when you have a chance to talk it with the French. 
 Mangle it. Mutilate it. Murder it. You must blun- 
 der at first in learning anything. You tumbled 
 down ten thousand times in learning to walk. A 
 great many of us are afraid to learn anything new, 
 because we must blunder and show awkwardness 
 in learning. What's the use of learning French ? 
 What's the use of learning anything new when our 
 bodies are forty, fifty, sixty years old. This : To 
 keep young. You know, of course, that your body 
 is only an instrument ; that your mind is the unseen 
 power that uses it ; that if you are always in a 
 fright, a fret, a worry, your body, your face, soon 
 has the lines and marks of that state of mind carved 
 on it. 
 
 What's the use, then, of learning French, of learn- 
 ing new games, plays, diversions, arts ? This : To 
 keep young, fresh, vigorous in mind. To keep so 
 in mind, and your body will follow suit. Half 
 the vigor and elasticity of youth conies because it's 
 
104 
 
 the season for Learning new things. Put a man at 
 
 a desk, make him a mere copyist, a machine, with 
 nothing else to do or think of. no new plans or enter- 
 prises, and In- ages more in ten years than others 
 do in thirty. When your mind stops growing, and 
 
 becomes a treadmill, the body soon commences to 
 
 decay. 
 
 It is thinking the same old things from year to 
 year, that makes men and women old. 
 
 When a boy or a girl, man or woman stops learn- 
 ing new things, they commence to fossilize. There 
 are old fogies at thirty as well as sixty — of both 
 sexes. There is a science or faculty of Learning to 
 learn. The more things you learn to do. whether 
 with the hands or the head, the more power you 
 gather to do — anything. When people live up to 
 this idea, — and more do live up to it now than ever 
 before, — there will be no old age of senility, of leth- 
 argy, of giving up all interest in life, of yawning, 
 and singing out "Heigh-ho!" every five minutes, 
 as if life was a burden, and you were tired of waiting 
 for the undertaker to come and bury yon. 
 
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