Laura ceased talking, but rocked herself swiftly to and fro in her chair. It is not necessary to say we were in our chambers,--as, since our British cousins have ridiculed our rocking-chairs, they are all banished from the parlor. Consequently we remain in our chambers to rock and be useful, and come into the parlor to be useless and uncomfortable in _fauteuils_, made, as the chair-makers tell us, "after the line of beauty." Laura and I both detest them, and Polly says, "Nothing can be worse for the spine of a person's back." To be "Stretched on the rack of a too-easy chair," let anybody try a modern drawing-room. So Laura and I have cane sewing-chairs, which, it is needless to add, rock,--rock eloquently, too. They wave, as the boat waves with the impetus of the sea, gently, calmly, slowly,--or, as conversation grows animated, as disputes arise, as good stories are told, one after another, so do the sympathizing and eloquent rocking-chairs keep pace with our conversation, stimulating or soothing, as it chances. And now I come to my first trouble,--first, and, as it happened, of long standing now; insomuch that, when Laura asked me once, gravely, why I had not made it a vital objection, in the first place, I had not a word to reply, but just--rocked. She, Laura, was stitching on some shirts for "him." They were intended as a wedding-gift from herself, and were beautifully made. Laura despised a Wheeler-and-Wilson, and all its kindred,--and the shirts looked like shirts, consequently. I linger a little, shivering on the brink. Somehow I always say "_him_,"--nowadays, of course, Mr. Sampson,--but then I always said "he" and "him." I know why country-folk say so, now. Though sentimentalists say, it is because there is only one "he" for "her," I don't believe it. It is because their names are Jotham, or Adoniram, or Jehiel, or Asher, or some of those names, and so they say "he," for short. But there was no short for me. So I may as well come to it. "His" name was America,--America Sampson. It is four years and a half since I knew this for a fact, yet my surprise is not lessened. Epithets are weak trash for such an occasion, or I should vituperate even now the odious practice of saddling children with one's own folly or prejudice in the shape of names. There was no help for it. There was no hope. My lover had not received his name from any rich uncle, with the condition of a handsome fortune; so he had no chance of indignantly asserting his choice to be Herbert barefoot rather than Hog's-flesh with gold shoes. His father and mother had given his name,--not at the baptismal font, for they were Baptists, and didn't baptize so,--but they had given it to him. They were both alive and well, and so were seventeen uncles and aunts who would all know,--in good health, and bad taste, all of them.