“Your bargain turns out a good one; and the same if the neighbourhood improves, so as to render your situation a more desirable one than it was before. Your case, you say, is the reverse. Rent and tax remain as they were, and the neighbourhood is less desirable than it was; and so I say it is a bad speculation to you. ’Tis a pity you can’t take up your house, and carry it to the new road, and set it down there.” Maynard was easily convinced how clever he should be thought, if he could put the ladies in the way of doing this. Such a very capital idea! the ladies thought it, till told that it was not original;—that in America such a thing had been heard of and seen as the removal of a dwelling on wheels. The speculation was followed out;—how charming it must be to the owner of the house to be able to put it where it would be sure of bringing a good rent till it was worn out, instead of placing it, as now, where there was no certainty of how much or how little it would be in request twenty years hence.—How charming it would be to the tenant to have the power of wheeling himself into any position he liked, or of obtaining a reduction of rent in case of the desired ground being preoccupied! (for in those circumstances, rent would be precisely proportioned to the advantages of the locality.) How charming, lastly, to the government, to receive the house-tax in a steady proportion which none could dispute: for no house-tax could then be collected unless it were lowered _ad valorem_. No one who could move away would stay in a poor situation, to pay a tax as high as had been imposed in a favourable locality. Equity would be the order of the day, Mrs. Barton decided, if houses went on wheels; and landlords, tenants, and assessors might be all loyal and harmonious together.—Miss Biggs put her head out at the door to take a survey of the solid front of the dwelling, while her mistress tried the stability of the foundations with her toe. There was little hope that this house could be set upon wheels. The house would be even more difficult to shift than the lease.