"It is so sweet for us to be together in our nice new home," she said, as I dutifully toted dishes to the kitchen. "You wipe while I wash them, and then you can take a hammer and some tacks and fix these old chairs for the kitchen. When you get that done you can put up some shelves for me in the fruit pantry, and why don't you arrange your books to-day? They're in all sorts of places. There are lots of sticks and stones around the yard. Suppose you pick them up and mow the lawn. Oh, I know what you can do! You can level up all these little gullies where the rain has cut up the loose dirt in the back yard. Isn't it just too dear for anything for us to have a whole week of fun fixing up around the house? I think after you get through with the yard you can----" And so on and so on, to the end of the chapter! Some people think cleaning up around a new house is pie for papa, but it isn't. There is none of that glamour you read about in "The Delights of Home" articles, and it isn't a thing on earth but a case of chuck the cuffs and collars and yield your soul to perspiration and persistence. First, when you start to follow the carpenter into nooks and corners of the cellar and little hiding places in the top floor, you find that he has invented innumerable kinds of leavings, deftly tucked here and there where nobody but a second-sight man would ever figure on locating them. You begin to pick up and after you've stooped about two thousand times you remember the picture in the liver medicine ad., where the man stands with his hands on the small of his back, looking unhappy and pessimistic. And it isn't only picking up, but it's cleaning out. What to do with the stuff bothers you. It's a cinch to burn the shavings and little pieces of wood and that kind of material, but you've got to deal again with bits of putty and glass and bent nails and tacks and other unburnable debris, and you hate to throw them into the bathtub because of the plumbing. You finally throw them out the window. Later you realize that you threw them out unwisely. That's when you start to work on your lawn and side yard, and every time you stick in the trowel where you are setting out plants you fetch up a quart of junk. The astonishing lot of garbage they used to make the ground you stand on is bad enough, but with the things you've thrown out added to it the situation is exasperating.