Jim always agreed with me in those days before nervousness induced by woman drove us through fire and over the bumpy paths of error, that housekeeping was the ideal life. Knowledge of what the people will stand is power, and it has packed some powerful doses in cans. They used to throw away half the hog until they got knowledge. Some epicure who lived on rats and bats' eyes, announced that the black spot in the oyster is the best part. What he had to say was published in a bulletin or a report--let me see, was it from the Department of Agriculture? I've read a good many of their bulletins, but I can't be sure if they did that for the country or not. At any rate, the report went into oysters from away back, quoted authorities from Egypt and Persia, who were fond of dogs, and gave the needed impetus to the captains of the canning industry, who are always on the lookout for pointers--or pugs. Since then all the black spots have been saved on the farm, whether in hogs or apples, done up at some factory in neat glass jars, with a chemist's certificate that they do not contain boracic acid or turpentine, and will not eat the enamel off a stew-kettle; sterilized, gold-labeled and rechristened "Meadfern" crab apples, mince-meat, gelatine, invalid's food and what not, until it is hard to tell where the economy will stop. The latest thing in this line is the current information that it pays to feed the stimulating prickers from the wild gooseberries to make the hens lay. I once asked a fellow who ran a cannery why he used such expensive labels. "To please the goats," he answered. And so his business is largely human nature, too. We laugh at the foolish goats for eating the label off a can--we eat the same thing ourselves. When I come to drink the bitter hemlock, I pray it may be labeled so as to take the pucker out of it. I would rather starve than board, so I started out to find my desert island. "You advertise rooms for light housekeeping," said I to a sad-faced, middle-aged woman, who answered my ringing of the bell of a three-story brownstone house in East Thirty-eighth Street. Some prosperous merchant had probably lived there twenty years before, but it had been converted into a nest for workers. [Illustration: "YOU ADVERTISE ROOMS FOR LIGHT HOUSEKEEPING."] "Yes, sir," she replied. "Two back rooms." "What floor?" I asked, having in mind the force of gravity. "Second floor. How many in your family?" "Only me." "You keep house alone?" "Certainly. I know how." "Don't you find it lonesome?" "I hope so. I want to be lonesome." "Well, I don't know." She hesitated and looked me over with great care. "Have you anybody to recommend you?" "I see that you doubt my sanity, madam. My nerves are a little out of line; I have just left the hospital and must be quiet. Do you see? If you must have references, I work for the Department of Health." "Oh, that's all right, then, if you work for the Department of Health."