It was six years ago this spring. We were sitting in the library in our city house, Harry was a baby; and baby was not. I laid down the Evening Post, and looked up with an incipient groan. "The usual way I suppose," said I. "You'll go home with the baby, and I--I shall camp out in New York." "Home" is Jennie's home in Michigan, where she had spent two of the three summers of our married life, while I existed in single misery in my empty house in 38th street. Oh, the desolateness of those summer experiences. Oh, the unutterable loneliness of a house without the smile of the dear wife, and the laugh and prattle of the baby boy. I even missed his cry at night. "It's a long, long journey," said Jennie, "and a long, long way off; and I did resolve last summer I never would put a thousand miles again between me and my true home, John. For that is not my home--you are my home." And a soft hand stole gently up and toyed with my hair. Vanity of vanities, all is vanity, saith the preacher. To which I add, especially husbands. No man is proof against the flatteries of love. At least I am not, and I am glad of it. "You can't stay here, Jennie," said I. "I am afraid not," said she. "It is Harry's second summer, and I would not dare." "The sea shore?" said I, interrogatively. "Not one of those great fashionable hotels, John. It would be worse for Harry than the city. And then think of the cost." "True," said I reflectively. "I wish we could find a quiet place, not too far from the city so that I could come in and out during term time, and stay out altogether during the summer vacation." "There must be some such, many such," said Jennie. "But to look for them," said I, "would be, to use an entirely new simile, like looking for a needle in a haystack. There must be some honest lawyers at the New York bar, and some impartial judges on the New York bench, but I should not like to be set to find them." I had been beaten in an important case that afternoon and was out with my profession. "Suppose you let me try," said Jennie--"that is to find the quiet summer retreat, not the honest lawyer." "By all means, my dear," said I. "And I have great confidence that if you are patient and assiduous, you will find a place in time for Harry to settle down in comfortably when he gets ready to be married." Jennie laughed a quiet little laugh at my incredulity, and sat straightway down to write half a dozen letters of inquiry to as many different friends in the environs of New York. I resumed the Evening Post. As to anything coming of her plans I no more dreamt of it than your grandfather, reader, dreamt of the Atlantic cable. But though I had been married three years I did not know Jennie then as well as I know her now. I have since learned that she has a habit of accomplishing what she undertakes. But this again is strictly confidential.