But as this is to be a truthful chronicle, be it said that my wife is the most wonderful woman in the world. How on earth she ever got the chairs and tables, the china closet and dishes, the cooking hardware and beds and mattresses and my desk and revolving bookcase, and Heaven knows what, all in place in one day is beyond me. There were pictures on the walls--old friends in new places, looking down to greet me. A foolish Billiken laughed out loud as I held up my hands in amazement. "Step high and easy," said my wife. "You'll scratch the hardwood floor," and she rubbed my heelprint from the polish with the hem of her working skirt. Then we started around testing the push-buttons. We pushed every button there was, and pulled down the curtains to try the effect in the parlor and dining-room. She hauled me around and showed me the marvelous gas range that she was going to do wonders with. That refrigerator, that was yet to have its first load of ice and provisions--it made me hungry just to look at it! We went upstairs and downstairs. I opened and closed every window and made wise-foolish observations on the proper care of a home. A man can be a fearful idiot when his chest is out. I chucked my coat and cuffs and collar and went to work on little odds and ends of chores about the place. Hasn't a fellow a right to whistle and sing when he comes home from foraging and finds the lady bird dancing around the new nest? There was a thermometer on top of the furnace in the basement, and beside it a round thing to tell how much water we were catapulting into the radiators. When there is too much water it overflows from a tank upstairs; when there isn't enough you turn some in downstairs. So I started a march up and down stairs, first turning some on and then scooting skyward to listen to the overflow, and after making this trip about ten times I had an appetite like a typhoid convalescent. O the tintinnabulation of the bells! There are church bells and wedding bells, bells that cry the joy of a new birth or toll the sorrow of the huddled family, bells that ring victory in war and bells that scream the hilarity of la fiesta! But for the bell that speaks the common language of all men, I name the dinner bell! The first biscuits were piping hot on the plate. "Are they as good as your mother used to make?" asked my wife. "My mother," I said, "was a piker at biscuit making!" And she beamed with pleasure when I slandered my honored mother!