University of Virginia Library

SPRING IN DANBURY.

MR. COBLEIGH'S SORROW.

MR. COBLEIGH moved on the Ist of May. We were going through North Street when we met him with the insignia of the act upon him; viz., a looking-glass, clock, and lamp. If we had suddenly discovered our own family moving, we could not have been more astonished. He had lived in the house whence he was moving for at least eight years. He set the lamp on a fence, and propped the clock and looking-glass against the same.

"You are surprised to see me at this?" he said with an anxious look.

We admitted as much.

"I little expected it at one time myself." And he sighed drearily.

"Any trouble with the landlord?"

"No, no."

"With the house, then?"

"Oh, no! good landlord, and good house. I don't know if I'll ever again find as good. I've

lived there eight years last fall; and I might've lived there all my life, if it wasn't for the danged fools in the world."

We looked our sympathy.

"You see," he went on, "about six months ago, one of those chaps who believe in a series of sudden and unexpected judgment-days—Second Advent, they call 'em—moved in next door (where Parker used to live). He was a peaceful sort of a man enough to get along with; but he was a strong Second Advent, and so is his wife. Well, they hadn't lived there two weeks before they got acquainted, and began to have revelations." He paused and sighed.

"But why should their peculiar religious belief make you dissatisfied with your home?" we ventured to inquire.

"Why?" he ejaculated, staring hard at us. "But then you don't know any thing about it. You never lived next door to a Second Advent, perhaps?"

"Not that we can remember."

"You'd remembered it if you had," he replied with significant emphasis. "I'll never forget my experience. That family got acquainted with us; and then it had its revelations. First they borrowed a little sugar, and then a little tea, and then a little saleratus, and then this, and then that. They said the world was all going to be burned up in

two weeks, and they didn't feel like going to the expense of getting a barrel of sugar, when eternity was so close; and wouldn't we let them have a small teacupful? We let 'em have it, Then, two days after, they came in, and said, that, owing to the immediate approach of the end of all things, they didn't think it advisable to lay in a ton of saleratus, and wouldn't we just loan them a cupful? My wife didn't believe, of course, that the world was a-coming to an end; but she thought the poor critters did: and she reasoned, that, when they saw there was no fire nor smoke on the day in question, they'd pony up with the sugar and saleratus, and the hundred and one other things. But they wasn't that kind of Advents. When the time came around, and the performance didn't, they professed to have got a sort of postscript with later particulars; and then they came over as rampant as ever, and more so. In fact, every fresh disappointment appeared to give them new zeal for victuals and other things; and it got so that they were over every day, and sometimes twice a day, after one thing or another."

"But didn't they return any of the articles?"

"Certainly not. If the world was going to end, what on earth was we a-going to do with the articles? I couldn't go through fire, could I, with tea-cupfuls of saleratus, sugar, tea, &c., hung to me? That's the way they reasoned. But they was going to make it all right on the other shore, was what

his wife always said. I told my wife, that, if we could only get back ten per cent of the things on this shore, I'd cheerfully run my chances for the balance when we got over there. Besides all that, the prospect of so much groceries waiting me on the other shore began, after a while, to get very embarrassing; and I kinder hinted to the chap something to this effect; but it did no good. He'd got that notion bored right into his skull; and all he could see was clouds of glory, and angels, and harps, and my sugar and saleratus and coffee and the like. By George! it got to be just awful, I can tell you! Day in and day out, that fellow, or some of his folks, was repairing their ascension duds, or going for my groceries; and it did seem as if I'd go mad, and get up a judgment-day on my own hook. Why, that chap would come on the greatest errands you ever saw. He come in one day to get my shaving-brush. He said he didn't feel justified in buying a new brush right on the eve of a general resurrection; but he would use mine, and, when we all got over there" (here Mr. Cobleigh waved his hand in gloomy indication of the locality), "he'd give me a shaving-brush inlaid with precious stones, and frisking in golden foam. Bah!—the jackass! But that's the way he'll talk. He got my axe one day with a lot of the same foolishness; and, while he was using it, the handle broke, and the blade went down the well. He come over right away to see if I had another axe; and when I told him I hadn't, and that I didn't know how I was to get along without that one, I'm blamed if he didn't want me to borrow one from some of the neighbors, so he could finish the little job he was at! He said there was no use of my buying a new axe, with the crack of doom staring us in the face. There'd be no use for a new axe in heaven, for there'd be no pain there, an' no crying; with a lot of other stuff. This riled me like thunder. But there was no use talking to him. I was mad, though, about the axe,—as mad as I could be; and I told him, if he didn't get me a new axe, I'd bust him in pieces with the right arm of the law. And what do you suppose he said?" And Mr. Cobleigh looked at us with grim anxiety.

We were obliged to admit that we couldn't tell.

"He said he'd go home and pray for me," added our friend with a sigh of despair. "And now, what could I do with such a chap as that! There was no use in getting mad, and you couldn't reason him out of the foolishness. And he wouldn't move; and the day of judgment showed no signs of being in earnest. So there I was. The only thing I could do was to get away; and I've hired a house at the other end of the town, and I'm moving there. And now," added our unfortunate friend, steadying the looking-glass and clock under his

arms, while he grasped the lamp, "I've got where there is a jail on one side of me, and a graveyard on the other; and I don't care a darn how many Second Advents move in on either side."

And he stalked grimly on his way.

THE BENEVOLENT STRANGER.

SHE had a hen that was bound to set, and which she was bound should not set. Where there is such a diversion of sentiment between a family and its hens, there can be no peace nor harmony. The feelings of both are arrayed against the other; and conflict and jars, and unhappiness generally, are the sure results. There may come a time when both parties will clearly comprehend each other, and when the hen's feelings will not only be understood, but respected. We should like very much to live until the glad dawn of that era; but our friends mustn't be too confident that we will. A family on Nelson Street, just above Division, have a hen that wishes to set. She was surprised on the nest Friday afternoon for the severalth time. The woman of the house thus found her, and, snatching her up, took a string, tied it about the fowl's leg, and hitched her up to the fence. She had just completed this act, when she was accosted by an elderly gentleman, a stranger, who,

in passing, stopped to observe the performance. He was a man of a grave but benevolent expression of face, and one whose dress indicated that he was in good circumstances, and thus must command respect.

"What is the trouble with the hen, madam!" he asked.

"I'm trying to break her up from setting," replied the woman,

"And don't you succeed?"

"I haven't so far, although I've tried every thing about. We've poured water on her, and kept her under a barrel, and beat her, and tied a red rag around her leg, and tied her up in the hot sun all day, and done about every thing. But I think I'll conquer her now. I've got her tied up by the leg, so she can't touch the ground; and I guess she'll get sick of setting when she's let down again."

The stranger looked at the hen, which was evidently suffering from the position it was in, and with a sigh asked,—

"Won't you take her down now? She suffers."

"I can't help it," said the woman with tightening teeth. She must learn better."

"Have you any children?" he inquired.

"Yes; five."

"Why did you have them?"

"Why—did—I—have—them?" she repeated, staring at him. "Why, because I wanted them."

"Exactly. It was in obedience to a maternal instinct. Now, suppose, when you felt this want for children, you had been shoved under a barrel: would that have been right?"

"No," said she softly.

"Or had cold water poured on your head?"

She said nothing.

"Suppose, again, you had a red flannel tied around you: how would that have done?"

Still she was silent.

"We'll make another supposition," he continued. "Suppose that when this hungering for a little one to come to you, one that you might take and lead and teach, just as your neighbors about you lead and teach their precious ones, you had been beaten, tied up by the feet, and left in the hot sun all day: would that have been right?"

She dropped her head, and said nothing.

"Or would you prefer being tied up by one foot to a fence?"

"No, no!"

"Will you take the hen down?"

In something less than four seconds that hen was down from her uncomfortable position, and moving about with a most grateful step.

"I'll never tie up another hen as long as I live!" cried the excited woman.

"Good for you!" said the old gentleman.

"Hens must not always set when they want to; but shutting them up in a coop where they can have plenty of room, but no nests to set in, will break them up just as effectually as violent measures; and, better yet, you retain their confidence and affection."

The repentant woman invited him to take a glass of milk; and he went in and took it.

MR. COVILLE'S EXPERIMENT.

MR. COVILLE has got but one apple-tree; but it is a good tree. It has hung full of blossoms, and in the past week has been a very beautiful ornament in his little yard. We do think apple-blossoms the sweetest flowers ever created. On Mr. Coville's tree worms have made a huge and unsightly nest. It was not only an objectionable shadow upon the glory of the foliage, but it threatened to cover the tree with an enemy which would destroy the fruit, and make its place loathsome with their bodies. Mr. Coville learned that the only sure way of getting rid of the nest was to burn it away. This was to be done by a lighted bunch of rags saturated with camphene, and tied to the end of a pole so as to be applied to the nest. It was on Friday evening that Mr. Coville did this business. His wife helped him. He put a barrel

under the tree to stand on, as he did not have a pole long enough to reach the nest from the ground. He tied a lot of rags on the end of a stick, and dipped the mass into a basin of camphene, and then touched off a match, and applied the ball of flame to the nest. High as he was from the ground, still he had to stand well up on his toes to make the remedy effective. But Mr. Coville did not mind that at all, because the flame was doing the work most beautifully.

"That'll sizzle 'em, by gracious!" he shouted down to his wife, who stood by him, while his eyes were rivited on the devastation above his head.

"Wah, ooh, ooh!" suddenly rent the air above the apple-tree; and, before the startled woman could comprehend from whence came the dreadful cry, she received a blow on the head from a ball of burning rags, and went down like a flash, striking the ground in time to see her husband descend, seat first, on a similar ball of flame, and rise again as if called up by an unseen but irresistible power.

It was all explained in a minute, while Mr. Coville sat in a large dish of cold water. It appears that a drop of the lighted camphene fell from the ball, and struck Mr. Coville on the chin just as he was in the very climax of enthusiasm, when every nerve seemed stretched to its utmost tension in fond anticipation of the most gratifying results. The shock was too great for his nervous

system to withstand. The barrel went over in that awfully unexpected way which a barrel has of going over; and, in the descent of his person, Mr. Coville fetched his wife a wipe over the head with his fireworks, as forcible as it was unintended; and wound up the performance by sitting abruptly and inexplicably down upon the illumination itself. Mrs. Coville lost some hair, and was scorched on one ear, and Mr. Coville has had to have an entirely new sag put in his pants; but the barrel was not injured in the least, and the torch is about as good as new, if any one cares to use it.

HIS WIFE'S MOTHER.

THEY had been having pancakes since the Ist of February. He was an economical man, and thought fifty-cent molasses was good enough. She was a trifle more refined in her taste, and yearned for sirups; but, being a patient and meek woman, she gave up the struggle for the desire of her heart, and quietly submitted to his decision. Last Friday her mother made them her first visit. She is a woman large of bone, quick of thought, and amply adapted to tussle with the problems of life. She didn't take to the cheap adornment of the pancakes, and asked her daughter why she didn't have sirup.

"These cakes are too good to be smeared with such stuff," she asserted in a tone of disgust.

The wife made a feeble reply, while the husband smiled grimly to himself.

"Can't you get sirup in Danbury?" she asked him.

"I s'pose so."

"Then I shall expect some for my breakfast to-morrow morning," she said, looking straight at him.

Next morning the pitcher of molasses was on the table. She picked it up, and smelled of the contents.

"Faugh!" she exclaimed, lifting her nose: "where's that sirup?"

"I didn't get it," said he, without looking up.

"Did you forget it?" she asked, opening her lips as little as possible to say the words.

"No."

"Why didn't you get it, then?"

"Because it costs more than I want to pay."

"Oh!"

There was a moment's pause after this ejaculation, during which he raised his eyes to leer at her, but dropped them again, and moved uneasily in his chair.

"You never seem to think of the cost when you want a cigar or a drink of liquor, or to go off alone to a place of amusement," she said, looking straight

at his depressed face; "but, when any thing better than tar is wanted at home for pancakes, the cost is a matter of some importance. If you had a stomach that was half human, you couldn't eat it."

"It's good enough for me; an' what's good enough for me must be good enough for others," he doggedly growled.

There was a jump, the sound of an overturning chair and crockery; and she was standing up, with one hand convulsively grasped in his hair, and the other clutching the pitcher of offence. His face was pressed against the table.

"Lemme up!" he yelled.

"It's good enough for you, is it?" she cried. "Well, you shall have the whole of it."

And she turned the contents over his head, and worked it in his hair, and down his neck, and in his ears, while he spluttered and screamed and whined, and struggled with all his might to release himself; but he was like a baby in the hands of a giant.

When she got through, she coolly proceeded to the sink, and deliberately washed her hands, while he sat there, quivering all over, and staring at her with an expression in his eyes that tallied admirably with the erect condition of his hair.

He was two full hours getting that stuff out of his hair; but it was not wasted time. A gallon of the best sirup was sent up to the house within an hour after he went down; and when she returned

home, four days later, he hired a carriage expressly to take her to the cars. When she came, she had to walk from the depot.

THE UNOSTENTATIOUS CUCUMBER.

THE first basket of cucumbers appeared in our market last week. Cucumbers are man's earliest friends. In appearance they are the most unpretentious among vegetables; but in character they take the precedence. When a cucumber first comes around, there is a general feeling of uneasiness, arising from a doubt, whose subtle influence is felt throughout the community. But this uneasiness wears off alter a while, and suspicion gives way to genuine regard. In fact, there is not a vegetable which comes to the market that will command the respect a cucumber receives. When we see a cucumber, we are led to look back over its career. It has been a stormy one, even under the most favorable circumstances possible to cucumber development. Only about one in ten starting even in life ever reaches a position in society. There is some recompense, of course, in the excitement which arises from the dangers; and we can well believe that it must be eminently gratifying to a successful cucumber, when it has gained the victory, to find, that, instead of sinking into helpless old age,

it has been taken into the bosom of an enthusiastic family, and in a very few hours will be exploring them. Nothing excites a cucumber. This has been its record since time began; and its self-possession, even in the presence of the most famous physicians and most successful coroners, has given rise to a popular proverb. What a cucumber has got to do, it does with all its might. It enters upon the work with intense enthusiasm; but it patiently waits the time of action. The great depth of its nature is hidden from the world until about three A.M.

SHE OBJECTED TO MUD.

THIS is a very trying season to smitten young men. The mud is very deep and very sticky; and a young man is apt to be careless and indifferent about his stepping when escorting a particularly attractive young lady home. A rather embarrassing predicament a Danbury young man was placed in Sunday night. A young lady whose acquaintance he made a short time ago, and who struck him as being a trifle above any other being on earth, was leaving church without an escort Sunday night. He hastened to her side with his services. She accepted, and with a heartiness that made the universe act as if it was about to slip from under him. She took his arm; and he moved along with her as

carefully as if she was a steamboat covered with diamonds. He never thought of the mud or the puddles, but ploughed through the one, and splashed through the other, as if both had been the choicest flowers. His thoughts being in heaven, it was natural that he should suppose his feet were not far below. When they got to the house, and he saw that there were indications of a good-sized parlor, he was fairly enchanted. They reached the stoop: she opened the door, and stepped into the hall to permit him to pass in, which he was hastening to do, when the burly form of the young lady's mother suddenly confronted him.

"Who's this?" she abruptly asked.

"O Ma!" exclaimed the young girl, blushing, "this is Mr. Parker, who has come home with me."

"An' have you invited him in here such a night as this, with the mud a foot deep? Do you s'pose I've nothing to do but traipse after a lot of young loons, cleaning up their mud? My gracious! just look at them feet of his!—chock-full of mud! Do you s'pose I'm going to have that stuff tracked all over my carpets? Not by a good sight! Let him take his mud where he got it. I won't have it here; an' I've got no patience with people who don't know any better than to lug a swamp along with em."

And she swept indignantly back to the sitting-room, leaving the daughter dumb with confusion,

and the unhappy Mr. Parker staring vacantly at her. Recovering his senses sufficiently to bid her a husky good-night, he cast an agonized glance at "them feet of his," and immediately lifted them in a homeward direction.

RUNNING THE GANTLET.

A NEW family was to move into the neighborhood, and the neighbors were on nettles of curiosity in regard to them. The furniture came on Tuesday; and Mrs. Winters, who lives next door, received a call from Mrs. Jackson and Mrs. Reynolds just as the first load of goods made its appearance on the street. "Do you know the new neighbors are coming to-day?" inquired Mrs. Jackson.

"I've heard so. I wonder what kind of people they are," said Mrs. Winters.

"I don't know," replied Mrs. Jackson; "but I think their furniture is coming now."

"Is that so!" And Mrs. Winters hastened into the next room, whose window commanded a most desirable view of the situation.

The excellent ladies followed immediately after her; and the three forms filled up the window, and the three pairs of eyes peered through the blinds in the liveliest expectation. The load drove up to

the gate; and, after what appeared to be a needlessly long time, the ropes were removed, and the unloading commenced.

"That must be the man," said Mrs. Reynolds, indicating a gentleman who just staggered up with a clock under one arm, a looking-glass under the other, a basket of something or another in each hand, and his pockets full of vases.

"Of course," promptly chimed in her companions, recognizing at once that the pack-horse was "the man."

"He's nice-looking," said one of the ladies; in which the others coincided.

"What is that at the front of the wagon?" asked

Mrs. Jackson.

"I was looking at that myself," said Mrs. Winters. "It's a settee, ain't it?"

"I guess it is," replied Mrs. Jackson anxiously. "I didn't know at first but that it might be a tete-a-tete."

"Oh, no! that's nothing but a settee,—a well-worn one too," said Mrs. Reynolds.

"Why, don't you suppose they've got a tete-a-tete!" inquired Mrs. Jackson with painful anxiety.

"It tain't on that load, at any rate," said Mrs. Reynolds, whose carefully trained eyes had already encompassed and pierced the wagonful of furniture.

"What do you think of those chairs?" asked Mrs. Winters. "I can't see them very well, as my eyes trouble me so."

Mrs. Jackson kindly came to her rescue at once.

"They're oak, I guess, an' a very cheap-looking article at that. I do wonder if this is their best furniture."

Further remark on the topic was cut short by the appearance of a tired-looking woman leading two children. She stopped at the load, and said something to the pack-horse.

"That's her!" breathlessly exclaimed Mrs. Jackson.

"Well, there's nothing stunning about her," suggested Mrs. Winters.

"Gracious! I should say not," added Mrs. Reynolds. "She's mortal homely; and she's got no more style than a telegraph-pole."

"Look at that hat! It's a fall hat, as sure as I live!" And the speaker almost lost her breath at the discovery.

"What sort of goods has she on? Is it calico, or a delaine?"

"I can't see from here; but I guess it's some cheap woollen goods. But see how it fits!"

"And she's got hoops on, as true as I'm alive!" explosively announced Mrs. Winters.

"That's so," chimed in the others with a tone of disgust that could not be concealed.

"Well, I know what the rest of the furniture is

without seeing it, now that I've seen her," intelligently observed Mrs. Jackson. "They ain't got a tete-a-tete to their name, and those chairs are their best parlor chairs too: you can take my word for that. I sha'n't call there in a hurry."

"Hardly," observed her companions with significant smiles.

And the three returned to the other room to talk of the revival.

Reader, if you have to move, move in the dead of the night. It's the best time; and you don't need much of a torchlight procession, either.

WHETHER this is the best time to burn garden rubbish is a question susceptible of considerable discussion; but it is the popular season. Great care should be taken in the composition of the burning heaps. If there are no old rubbers handy, a length of oilcloth makes a very good substitute. There is, of course, nothing that emits the peculiar flavor of burning rubber, unless it is hair; but hair is too costly to be considered for a moment. A piece of old oilcloth, about three feet or so in length, subjected to a slow flame, can be smelled by the most ordinary nose the distance of four gardens; and to many it is just as satisfying as burning rubber. It is best that the man should gather the rubbish.

This is so evident as to be not worthy of any discussion. A woman with a long-handled rake is more dangerous than a wet cellar. What rubbish she gets together scarcely compensates for the damage to the rake or to herself, or to any one who happens to be in the same yard at the time, and is too gallant or too helpless to take the nearest fence at a flying leap. The crowning performance is when she has got her skirts inextricably tangled up with the implement. She then goes into the house, leaving the rake at the foot of the back-stoop, with the teeth upward.

AN EARLY DELICACY.

A SALLOW-FACED man, dressed in faded and insufficient garments, with a knotted, sandy beard, skipped lightly into a Danbury dry-goods store yesterday afternoon. He had hugged up close to him in one arm a glass jar with a bit of dingy muslin over it. He wanted to see the proprietor; and a clerk obligingly pointed out that gentleman to him, who was then engaged in the herculean task of selling a lady a half-yard of linen. The stranger stalked up to him.

"Be you the boss, mister?" he asked with a seductive smile.

"Yes, sir. Any thing I can do for you?"

"Yes," said the stranger, carefully depositing the jar on the counter, and with an air as if the counter had been erected with this object specially in view. "I've got a prime article of horse-radish here that I want to sell you."

"I don't want to buy any," said the merchant, with a tinge of pettishness in his tone.

"It's a prime article, I can tell ye."

"I don't want it."

"But you ain't looked at it, you ain't tried it," argued the vender.

"I tell you I don't want it."

"You can have it for fifty cents, although it's worth seventy-five. I'll dump it right out in a paper; or I'll leave the jar, and you kin bring it back to-morrow,"

"I don't want it, I say; take it away," demanded the merchant, flushing slightly in the face.

"Don't you git in a hurry, boss," persuasively urged the proprietor of the condiment. "You don't git such horse-radish as this every day, I kin inform ye. I growed the roots that came from myself, by jickey! I growed 'em back of a barn; an' I took as much care of their cultivation as if they had been my own flesh and blood. Why, I've got up in the dead of night, with a lantern, an' went out back of that barn an' tucked them up, as it were. An' I said to my ole woman, sez I, 'Ole woman, them roots will go to make glad

the heart of a merchant-prince,' sez I; an' here they be, grated up an' ready for the table. What do you say?"

"I say, as I said before, that I don't want your stuff, and I want you to take it away from here at once," said the merchant, who had now become very red in the face.

"Stuff!" ejaculated the man with a start, while his eyes watered, and his under-lip trembled. "Stuff! You call that stuff,—that which grew right behind my own barn, an' which has had a lantern above it in the dead of night,—grated up by my own hands, an' with a pint of the best cider-vinegar in the country dancing through its veins?—you call it stuff, do you? an' you stand right here, an' in the broad light of day declare that none of that horse-radish will fresco your cold meat, an' set up before your children like a thing of beauty? All right" [He gathered the jar up in his arm again.] "You can't have this horse-radish now. You needn't whimper for it. Not a word from you," he added, with as much earnestness as if the merchant had dropped on his knees, and was agonizingly begging for a hopeless favor. "You ain't got money enough in your hull store to buy a grain of it. You shouldn't git as much as a smell of it if you was to git right down on your snoot, an' howl till you were cracked open. Gosh dum me!" he suddenly shouted, "I'll go out on the

boundless prairie, an' eat every bit of it myself, if it burns a hole clean through me as big as a tunnel, an' sets the prairie afire, an' devastates the land."

And with this terrific threat he strode gloomily away in search of a prairie.

THERE is one thing on which a husband and wife never can and never will agree; and that is on what constitutes a well-beaten carpet. When the article is clean, it's a man's impression that it should be removed, and he be allowed to wash up, and quietly retire. But a woman's appetite for carpet-beating is never appeased while a man has a whole muscle in his body; and, if he waited until she voluntarily gave the signal to stop, he might beat away until he dropped down dead. It is directly owing to his superior strength of mind that the civilized world is not a widow this day.

MAKING THE GARDEN.

WE suppose there is a time that comes to every man when he feels he should like to have a garden. If he takes such a notion, he will tell his wife of it. This is the first mistake he makes; and the ground thus lost is never fully recovered. She

draws her chair up to his, and lays one hand on his knee, and purses up her lips into a whistle of expectation,—the vixen!—and tells about her mother's garden, and how nice it is to have vegetables fresh from the vines every morning; and she will go right out and plan the whole thing herself. And so she does. He takes his spade, and works himself into a perspiration; and she tramps around under a frightful sun-bonnet, and gets under his feet, and shrieks at the worms, and loses her shoe, and makes him, first vexed, and then mad, and then ferocious. After the garden is spaded, he gets the seed, and finds she has been thoughtful enough to open the papers, and empty thirteen varieties of different vegetables into one dish. This leads him to step out doors, where he communes with Nature alone for a moment. Then he takes up the seed, and a hoe, and a line, and two pegs, and starts for the garden. And then she puts on that awful bonnet, and brings up the rear with a long-handled rake, and a pocketful of beans, and petunia-seed, and dahlia-bulbs. While he is planting the corn, she stands on the cucumber-hills and rakes over the seed-pan. Then she puts the rake-handle over her shoulder, and the rake-teeth into his hair, and walks over the other beds. He don't find the squash-seed until she moves; and then he digs them out of the earth with his thumb. She plants the beet-seed herself, putting about two feet of earth and sod upon them. Then she takes advantage of his absorption in other matters, and puts down the petunia-seed in one spot; and afterwards digs them up, and puts them down in another place. The beans she conceals in the earth wherever she can find a place, and puts the bulbs in the cucumber-hills. Then she tips over the seed-pan again, and apologizes; and steps on two of the best tomato-plants, and says, "Oh my!" which in no way resembles what he says. About this time she discovers a better place for the petunia-seed; but, having forgotten where she last put them, she proceeds to find them, and, within an incredibly brief space of time, succeeds in unearthing pretty much every thing that has been put down. After confusing things so there is no earthly possibility of ever unravelling them again, she says the sun is killing her, and goes over to the fence, where she stands four hours, telling the woman next door about an aunt of hers who was confined to her bed for eleven years, and had eight doctors from the city; but nothing would give her any relief until an old lady—But you have heard it before. The next day a man comes to his office to get the pay for a patent seed-sower which his wife has ordered; and he no more than gets away, before the patentee of a new lawn-mower comes in with an order for ten dollars; and he, in turn, is followed by the corn-sheller man; and the miserable gardener starts for home to head off the robbers, and finds his wife at the gate with his own hat on, and just about to close a bargain with a smooth-faced individual for a two-hundred-dollar mowing-machine, and a pearl-handled, ivory-mounted hay-cutter. He first knocks the agricultural implement agent on the head, and then drags the miserable woman into the house, and, locking the door, gives himself up to his emotions.

GETTING YOUR VEGETABLES FRESH.

THE chief charm of having a garden of your own is the fresh state of the vegetables which daily garnish your table. Any one who has always depended upon a store for his supply does not have the faintest conception of the superior flavor, tone, and elasticity of vegetables gathered fresh every morning from your own garden. Aside from this benefit, gardening is the most health-giving occupation known to man; unless we except that of a physician, which we don't. There is a man who lives on the other side of our street, who has a garden, and has fresh vegetables every day, our folks say. We don't know any thing about that; but we do know he has a garden, because we see him out in it every morning, in shirt-sleeves and slippers, picking cucumber and squash bugs. We know when he gets hold of one, by the way

he shuts up his mouth and fingers. Sometimes he doesn't catch the one he is after, and sometimes he makes a half-dozen passes at one bug. Every time he makes one of those passes he says something. The first remark is not very plainly heard, but the next is quite so; and the observation that follows after the sixth unfortunate pass appears to go completely through our head. He jumps around this way for about an hour, and, having got his blood up to fever-heat, goes in and drinks a cup of boiling coffee, and then goes to business. At noon he goes out there to kill a couple more bugs, but doesn't do it. He finds two hens from the next house in the cucumber-patch. They have scratched down to the cool earth, and thrown the parched soil of two cucumber-hills over their backs, and, with one eye closed in a speculative way, are thinking of the intense heat and the short grass-crop. When they see him, and the preparations of welcome he has hastily got together, they get up and leave. The first thing he throws at them knocks a limb from a choice pear-tree; and the next thing, which is generally a pail, goes through a glass cover to some choice flower-seeds, and loses its bail. He then goes into the house and gets some more boiling coffee, and says the man next door is—(something we never put in print)—and goes to business again. At night he comes home and kills bugs until supper-time, and then goes in with his fingers smelling as if he had shaken hands with twelve hundred bed-bugs. He keeps his boy home from school to watch the garden, and guard it against the encroachment of straying cattle. The boy gets several other boys to come over and help him. They take a half-dozen sheets out of the wash, and put up a circus in the back part of the yard; and some vicious boy who hasn't pins enough to get in leaves the front-gate open; and, when the circus is in the midst of its glory, the cry of "A cow in the garden!" breaks up the performance, and sends both artists and audience in pursuit of the beast. When our neighbor comes home that night to gather vegetables fresh from the garden, and smash bugs with his finger and thumb, and goes out and looks at the destruction, it is altogether likely the first thing he thinks of is the danger in eating store-vegetables which have been picked some days before, and allowed to swelter and wither in noxious barrels, and how much better it is to have every thing fresh from the garden. But we are not certain; neither is the proprietor of the circus.

GENTLE SPRING IN THE HOUSEHOLD.

WE frankly confess that we do not understand why the shaving-cup is packed at the bottom of a barrel of tinware, or why a vest is used to wrap up a

ham.

THE only way of putting down a stair-carpet without getting mad is to take the stairs out in the yard.

MANY articles which have become pleasant to us from long association look dreadfully cheap and dingy when loaded on a cart, with the neighboring window in direct range.

IT is carrying two lengths of stove-pipe, with two elbows at opposite angles, through a narrow hall, and up a carpeted stair, without dropping soot or knocking off the plaster, that is filling our lunatic-asylums.

NOTHING will start a man's temper so quick as to find the rubbish which he has thrown out of the back of the house as worthless appearing around at the front, under the charge of his patient and hopeful wife.

WHICH is heavier,—a pound of lead, or a pound of feathers!—Old Conundrum.

A single pound of leathers is just as heavy as a pound of lead; but twenty-five pounds of feathers in a tick, in a narrow and crooked hall-way, is about

as heavy as two hundred and eighteen pounds of lead.

YEARS of experience in moving enables a carman to distinguish, in an apparently indifferent glance, the light from the heavy end of a stove, or which is the best position on the stairs,—in front, or behind. Against these fearful odds the head of the family stands no chance whatever.

THEN there is the carman who is to move you. He is engaged the day before. He says it is going to be so busy, that there will be some difficulty in accommodating you; but, if you can have your things ready at seven A.M., he thinks he can fix it. You are up at five o'clock that morning. At half-past six a full load of furniture is out in front, and another load is stacked up in the hall and on the stairs. Your coat is torn down he back, one thumb is out of joint, and a pint of soot and an equal quantity of perspiration are fighting for the mastery of your person. At eleven A.M., the carman makes his appearance, and says we are going to have rain.

IT is singular the influence a stove-pipe has upon a married man. There is nothing in this world he respects so much. A passing load of furniture may, in its general appearance, be so

grotesque as to call forth the merriment of the thoughtless young; but, if there is a piece of stove-pipe in it no larger than a hat, he will not laugh. We don't care who the man is, how he has been brought up, what is his position, wealth, or influence: there is that about a length of stove-pipe which takes hold upon his very soul with a force that he is helpless to resist; and the married man who can stand within reaching-distance of a stove-pipe, without feeling his heart throb, his hands clinch, his hair raise, and his throat grow dry and husky, is an anomaly which does not exist. Stove-pipe has only one ingredient, and that is contrariness. It is the most perverse article in existence. It has done more to create heart-aches, imbitter lives, break up homes, and scrape off skin, than all other domestic articles together. The domestic screw-driver pales its ineffectual fires in the presence of a stove-pipe; and the family hammer just paws in the dust, and weeps. We don't care how much pains are taken to remember and keep in order the links: they will not come together as they came apart. This is not a joke; this is not an exaggeration: it is simply the solemn, heaven-born truth. If we appear unduly excited in this matter, we are sorry for it; but we cannot help it. We cannot write upon the subject at all without feeling the blood tingle at our very fingers' ends.

ONE of the most disastrous elements in a moving is a small boy with an aspiring disposition. If he carries any thing, it must be a chair, which he takes on his head, with the back at the front, so as to prevent him from seeing where he is going, and with the erect legs in range of the chandelier and upper door-casings. Thus equipped, he strikes a military step, improvising his mouth into a trumpet, and starts out. In less than a quarter of an hour he has that chair safely on the cart, where it is not wanted, and is hurrying back after another. Before the carman has returned for the second load, the one boy has developed into eight; each boy with a chair, each boy under feet, and each boy making as much noise as a planing-mill on a damp day. If a boy cannot get a chair to carry, he wants two bed-posts. He wants two, so he can carry one under each arm. Then he starts down stairs. First the posts cross each other at the front, and nearly throw him down; then they cross at the back, and the front ends fly off at a tangent, one of them digging into the kalsomined wall, and the other entangling in the banisters. But he won't let one of them go, but hangs on to both with exasperating obstinacy. In the mean time, the carman, who is working by the load, and not by the day, is waiting at the foot of the stairs, and wishing that he had that boy back of the Rocky Mountains for about fifteen minutes; and the

anxious father, with a straw bed in his arms, and his eyes full of dust, is at the head of the stairs, waiting to come down, and vociferating at the top of his voice, until the dust from the tick gets into his throat, and precipitates him into a violent fit of coughing. By the time the third load is on the way, the novelty of helping carry furniture is worn off to the boy; and he and his companions are firing rubbish from the garret at each other, or fooling with the horse just as some heavy object is being lifted on to the cart. The best plan for a moving family that has a boy is to get him a half-bushel of frozen potatoes to throw, and set him out in the suburbs until the affair is over.

A WOMAN'S idea of moving is to wear a pair of odd shoes, her husband's linen duster, a damaged hoopskirt, and a last year's jockey turned hind-side before. Thus formidably attired, with a pocketful of screws, nails, and picture-cords, and a limber-bladed case-knife in one hand, and a broom in the other, she is prepared to believe that something is about to be done. The first move she makes is at the parlor carpet. She takes up two tacks in about fifteen minutes, puts them in a pint saucer, and sets the saucer in the middle of the floor, where it will not be in the way. Then she goes into the hall to tell the carman to be careful in bringing down the large rocking-chair, as her

mother gave it to her. After that she darts into the kitchen, stops suddenly in the middle of the room, and says, "Now, what is it I was going to do?" and then races up stairs with a great bustle, on suddenly remembering that a pair of vases were not packed away with the bedding. But they were packed away; and, when she discovers the fact, she comes back, saying that she has so much to do, she don't really know what she is about. Afterwards she draws out the glass-ware to put it in a barrel; and, after packing away a couple of tumblers and a salt-cellar, takes down her dresses, and examines them with as much care as if she was going to a ball, and the carriage was already at the door. In the midst of this survey she suddenly thinks of something else, and rushes off to attend to it,—the case-knife in one hand, the broom in the other. When the stove is taken down, she is there; when the bureau is being lifted, she is in the exact way of the man who is going backward; when the carman gets up on the best chair to take down a frame, she is there to rebuke him. She attends to every thing. She makes her husband go out doors and clean his feet. She gets in the way when they are moving the ice-chest. She leaves the dust-pan just where the carman's assistant can step on the handle, and have it turn with him at a most unfortunate time. She gets the broom-stick entangled with her husband's legs, which makes him swear. She tries to lift a two-bushel basket of crockery, and, finding she can't do it, tells the carman she is not so strong as she used to be; and then contents herself with carrying down an old wooden chair, which has just been brought up stairs to be used in removing things from the walls, and which has to be found and brought up again by some one else. But it is in loading where she makes herself conspicuous. She brings out a ten-inch looking-glass, and wants it laid on the bottom of the cart; and she don't want any thing else to go on until she can get her work-basket. She thinks the stove and bed-room set should ride together; and is quite confident, that, if the bureau is permitted to stand on the cart as it does, it will never again be fit to be seen. The carman steps on her, and walks over her, and is swearing all the while down in his throat; but she don't mind him. She knows that that load isn't put on as it ought to be, and that there is room for lots of things yet. She brings on a clock, and a length of damaged stove-pipe, and a pair of old boots covered with mildew, and a small basket of empty spice-boxes, and an old gaiter, and the back of a worn-out vest, and wants them all put on the cart. She says there is plenty of room, and the things will come useful some time, and they don't take up any room anyway; and, just as the cart is moving away, she rushes after it with a second-hand peach-can stuffed with debris, which she successfully introduces into the load, and then comes back in triumph. And, while the carman is gone, she is just as busy as she can be, telling the woman next door that she can put just three times as much stuff on that cart as is on it; and, if she has got to move again, she believes she'll give right up and die.

IT is not the moving, so much as the "putting to rights," which is so exhaustive to the nervous forces of the entire family. This is due, in a great measure, to the carelessness in moving. When a man has a great deal to do, and little time to do it in, he takes no thought for the future. He throws a half-dozen screws into a barrel, with an idea that they will turn up all right when he wants them. The main object is to get them in some place now. So when he comes to put up the curtain-fixtures in the new house, and finds the ingredients in a mass of confusion, it is simply because he took them down that way, and cared only for present ease, without any regard to future convenience. In putting up the pictures, the nails are found in the bottom of a bureau-drawer under a pile of towels, and the hammer is at the bottom of a barrel of stovepipe in the cellar. Sometimes an hour is consumed in searching for a single stove-leg. The bread

is found rolled up in a carpet in an upper bedroom, the coffee-pot tied up in the bedding, the sugar in a barrel of carpet-rags, the tea-canister in the scuttle under the flatirons, the spoons in with a basket of empty medicine-bottles, and the table-cloth tied up with a half-bushel of tinware. The man does about all the work. The woman goes round with a broom, and sweeps up the soot, and feels of the mouldings to see if they have been damaged, and examines the paint to see if it is marred. She has been up the day before with a hired woman and cleaned the house, and she is very particular about its condition. If she sees a lump of dirt in the hall from the heel of the carman, she carefully hoists it upon the dust-pan, and says that all she is fit for is to slave her life out cleaning, without doing a bit of good; and then goes half way down the garden to throw the debris away. She is ten minutes doing it; and a man would give it one kick, and send it out of doors in an instant. When she ain't tumbling over the wrong articles, or misplacing the right ones, she is close at his heels, giving advice, and asking him if he thinks a woman is made of cast-iron. When he puts down the carpet, she stands on the breadth he is trying to stretch, and tells him she believes she will drop dead in her tracks if she don't get a chance to sit down pretty soon. Sometimes she is gone from sight for nearly half an hour, and the distant sounds of a hammer are heard. When she returns, she has another finger in a rag, and smells stronger than ever of arnica. Then, when the bureau is being moved, and her husband is struggling under his share till every muscle in his body is as stiff as steel, and his face like a beet, and his eyes protruding, and the ends of his fingers aching most acutely, she is round again. They are going over the best carpet; and she hastens back of him, because his boots are muddy, and, with a show of dexterity, tries to get a length of old rag-carpet over the new in the way he is backing; and his feet catch in it, and he yells; and then he stumbles and yells again, and catches himself only to stumble once more, and come down with the bureau on top of him, and the carman on top of the bureau. Then he jumps up, and makes the most extraordinary statement at the top of his voice; and the carman limps around with his countenance full of reproach; and she says she has always lived in a hog-pen, and always expects to, and then goes into the next house to have a good crying-spell and a cup of tea.