Trials and Confessions of a Housekeeper

railroad cars; knobs are tight; locks in prime order, and veneers

cling as tightly to their places as if they had grown there. All is

right and tight, and wears an orderly, genteel appearance; and what

is best of all the cost of every thing we have, good as it is, is

far below the real cost of what is inferior.

“It is better—much better,” said I to Mrs. Jones, the other day.

“Better!” was her reply. “Yes, indeed, a thousand times better to

have good things at once. Cheap furniture is dearest in the end.

Every housekeeper ought to know this in the beginning. If we had

known it, see what we would have saved.”

“If I had known it, you mean,” said I.

My wife looked kindly, not triumphantly, into my face, and smiled.

When she again spoke, it was on another subject.

CHAPTER VI.

LIVING AT A CONVENIENT DISTANCE.

THERE are few of us who do not feel, at some time in life, the

desire for change. Indeed, change of place corresponding, as it

does, in outward nature, to change of state in the mind, it is not

at all surprising that we should, now and then, feel a strong desire

to remove from the old, and get into new locations, and amid

different external associations. Thus, we find, in many families, an

ever recurring tendency to removal. Indeed, I have some housekeeping

friends who are rarely to be found in the same house, or in the same

part of the city, in any two consecutive years. Three moves,

Franklin used to say, were equal to a fire. There are some to whom I

could point, who have been, if this holds true, as good as burned

out, three or four times in the last ten years.

But, I must not write too long a preface to my present story. Mr.

Smith and myself cannot boast of larger organs of Inhabitativeness—I

believe, that is the word used by phrenologists—than many of

our neighbors. Occasionally we have felt dissatisfied with the

state of things around us, and become possessed of the demon of

change. We have moved quite frequently, sometimes attaining superior

comfort, and some times, getting rather the worst of, it for

“the change.”

A few years ago, in the early spring-time, Mr. Smith said to me, one

day:

“I noticed, in riding out yesterday, a very pleasant country house

on the Frankford Road, to let, and it struck me that it would be a

fine thing for us, both as to health and comfort, to rent it for the

summer season. What do you think of it?”

“I always, loved the country, you know,” was my response.

My heart had leaped at the proposition.

“It is such a convenient distance from the city,” said Mr. Smith.

“How far?”

“About four miles.”

“Do the stages pass frequently?”

“Every half hour; and the fare is only twelve and a half cents.”

“So low! That is certainly an inducement.”

“Yes, it is. Suppose we go out and look at the house?”