But half an hour ago all was peace, confidence and love, and now what a change is here! I hear the children, but see them not. Their plaintive wail reminds me how often laughter is the harbinger of tears. The hen with ruffled feathers and outstretched neck stands aloof upon the ridge of a distant dwelling. The household cat that had grown old in the family, and had good reason to believe herself privileged, purrs no more. She has painful reasons to think otherwise now, as she crouches in the most retired corner of the premises, assiduously applying whatever balm her tongue affords to injured parts. She doubtless muses how heavier than an infant’s spoon it is to feel an adult’s boot. Yet my neighbor was neither rash nor hasty. He seemed the embodiment of perseverance, as he repeatedly offered that length of stove-pipe an elbow which it, like a prudish maiden, provokingly refused. Soon the drops of perspiration began to stand upon his face and neck in large globes, and I knew that patience was oozing from every pore. I knew by the scattering children, the cackling hen, and the flying household cat, that the “rose-lipped cherubim” of which the poet sings, were abiding with him no longer. Presently his wife came to his assistance with a case-knife, and for a time it seemed as though victory would crown their united efforts. Reinforcements turned the tide at Waterloo, and laid proud France at the mercy of Europe, and how often the assistance from the mind or arm of a noble wife rolls back the enemy from the door. But reinforcements could not mend the matter here. The poor woman soon retired from the scene with wounded fingers and damaged pride. My neighbor himself has ceased to strive. Flattened, kicked, and abandoned, the pipes lie masters of the situation. Ah! I am fully persuaded that neither depth of affliction, nor height of impudence, nor length of trial, nor breadth of argument, nor extravagance, nor parsimony, nor things in particular, nor things in general, can begin to compare, as triers of patience, with a couple of old frill-edged stove-pipes, that emphatically set their edge against a union. [Illustration] THE BREATHING SPELL. As some lone reaper, tanned and sore, Doth pause to glance his acres o’er, Comparing what hath passed his hands With what before him bristling stands— Behind him lie the shocks and sheaves, While like a sea before him heaves, Far over valley, hill and plain, The waving heads of waiting grain— So pause I now, when half way through This growing book, my task to view; Behind lie many a sketch and line; Before me, countless pages shine; Behind, the thoughts are shaped and bound; Before, they float in freedom round.