Oh, you needn’t laugh. Instead of the comfortable naps to which I had been accustomed, I had to sleep with one eye open all night, lest I shouldn’t get into the city in time. I had to be shaving in the morning before a rooster in the barn-yard had stirred a feather; swallowed my coffee and toast by steam, and then, still masticating, made for the front door. There stood Peter with my horse and gig,--for I detest your cars and omnibuses. On the floor of the chaise was a huge basket in which to bring home material for the next day’s dinner; on the seat was a dress of my wife’s to be left “without fail” at Miss Sewing Silk’s, to have the forty-seventh hook moved one-sixth of a degree higher up on the back. Then there was a package of shawls from Tom Fools & Co., to be returned, and a pair of shoes to carry to Lapstone, who was to select another pair for me to bring out at night; and a demijohn to be filled with Sherry. Well, I whipped up Bucephalus, left my sleeping wife and babies, and started for town; cogitating over an intricate business snarl, which bade defiance to any straightening process. I hadn’t gone half a mile before an old maid (I hate old maids) stopped me to know if I was going into town, and if I was, if I wouldn’t take her in, as the omnibusses made her sick. She said she was niece to Squire Dandelion, and “had a few chores to do a shopping.” So I took her in, or rather, she took _me_ in, (but she didn’t do it but once--for I bought a sulkey next day!) Well, it came night, and I was hungry as a Hottentot, for I never could dine, as your married widowers _pro tem_ do, at eating-houses, where one gravy answers for flesh, fish and fowl, and the pudding-sauce is as black as the cook’s complexion. So I went round on an empty stomach, hunting up my _expressman parcels_, and wending my way to the stable with arms and pockets running over. When I got home, found my wife in despair, no tacks in the house to nail down carpets, and not one to be had at the store in the village; the cook had deserted because she couldn’t do without “her _city privileges_,” (meaning Jonathan Jones, the “dry dirt” man); and the chambermaid, a buxom country girl with fire red hair, was spinning round the crockery (a la Blitz) because she “couldn’t eat with the family.” Then Charley was taken with the croup in the night, and in my fright I put my feet into my coat sleeves, and my arms into my pants, and put on one of my wife’s ruffles instead of a dicky, and rode three miles in a pelting rain, for some “goose grease” for his throat. Then we never found out till cherries, and strawberries, and peaches were ripe, how many _friends_ (?) we had. There was a horse hitched at every rail in the fence, so long as there was anything left to eat on a tree in the farm; but if my wife went in town shopping, and called on any of them, they were “out, or engaged;”--or if at home, had “just done dinner, and were going to ride.”