The House | Page 5

family have been living in rented quarters for the last six
years. This informality of which I am so fond has often grieved and
offended Alice. It is that gentle lady's opinion that a man at my time of
life should have too much dignity to make a practice of "bolting into
people's houses" (I quote her words exactly) when I know as well as I
know anything that they are at dinner, and that a dessert in the shape of
a rhubarb pie or a Strawberry shortcake is about to be served.
There was a time when Alice overlooked this idiosyncrasy upon my
part; that was before I achieved what Alice terms a national reputation
by my discovery of a satellite to the star Gamma in the tail of the
constellation Leo. Alice does not stop to consider that our neighbors
have never read the royal octavo volume I wrote upon the subject of
that discovery; Alice herself has never read that book. Alice simply
knows that I wrote that book and paid a printer one thousand one
hundred dollars to print it; this is sufficient to give me a high and broad
status in her opinion, bless her loyal little heart!
But what do our neighbors know or care about that book? What, for
that matter, do they know or care about the constellation Leo, to say
nothing of its tail and the satellites to the stellar component parts
thereof? I thank God that my hospitable neighbor, Mrs. Baylor, has
never suffered a passion for astronomical research to lead her into a
neglect of the noble art of compounding rhubarb pies, and I am equally
grateful that no similar passion has stood in the way of good Mrs.
Rush's enthusiastic and artistic construction of the most delicious
shortcake ever put into the human mouth.
The Denslows, the Baylors, the Rushes, the Tiltmans and the rest have
taken a great interest in us, and they have shared the enthusiasm (I had
almost said rapture) with which Alice and I discoursed of "the house"
which we were going to have "sometime." They did not, however,

agree with us, nor did they agree with one another, as to the kind of
house this particular house of ours ought to be. Each one had a house
for sale, and each one insisted that his or her house was particularly
suited to our requirements. The merits of each of these houses were
eloquently paraded by the owners thereof, and the demerits were as
eloquently pointed out by others who had houses of their own to sell
"on easy terms and at long time."
It was not long, as you can well suppose, before Alice and I were
intimately acquainted with all the weak points in our neighbors'
residences. We knew all about the Baylors' leaky roof, the Denslows'
cracked plastering, the Tiltmans' back stairway, the Rushes' exposed
water pipes, the Bollingers' defective chimney, the Dobells' rickety
foundation, and a thousand other scandalous details which had been
dinged into us and which we treasured up to serve as a warning to us
when we came to have a house--"the house" which we had talked about
so many years.
I can readily understand that there were those who regarded our talk
and our planning simply as so much effervescence. We had harped
upon the same old string so long--or at least Alice had--that, not
unfrequently, even we smilingly asked ourselves whether it were likely
that our day-dreaming would ever be realized. I dimly recall that upon
several occasions I went so far as to indulge in amiable sarcasms upon
Alice's exuberant mania. I do not remember just what these witticisms
were, but I daresay they were bright enough, for I never yet have
indulged in repartee without having bestowed much preliminary study
and thought upon it.
I have mentioned our youngest son, Erasmus; he was born to us while
we were members of Plymouth Church, and we gave him that name in
consideration of the wishes of our beloved pastor, who was deeply
learned in and a profound admirer of the philosophical works of
Erasmus the original. Both Alice and I hoped that our son would
incline to follow in the footsteps of the mighty genius whose name he
bore. But from his very infancy he developed traits widely different
from those of the stern philosopher whom we had set up before him as

the paragon of human excellence. I have always suspected that little
Erasmus inherited his frivolous disposition from his uncle (his mother's
brother), Lemuel Fothergill, who at the early age of nineteen ran away
from the farm in Maine to travel with a thrashing machine, and who
subsequently achieved somewhat of a local reputation as a singer of
comic songs in the Barnabee Concert