“So I do, and so I will continue to do, Mrs. Potiphar; only I thought that, perhaps, you would like to know the fact, because it might make you more lenient to me when I regretted leaving our old house here. It has an aristocratic precedent.” Poor, dear little Mrs. P.! It didn’t take as I meant it should, and I said no more. Yet it does seem to me a pity that we lose all the interest and advantage of a homestead. The house and its furniture become endeared by long residence, and by their mute share in all the chances of our life. The chair in which some dear old friend so often sat--father and mother, perhaps--and in which they shall sit no more; the old-fashioned table with the cuts and scratches that generations of children have made upon it; the old book-cases; the heavy side-board; the glass, from which such bumpers sparkled for those who are hopelessly scattered now, or for ever gone; the doors they opened; the walls that echoed their long-hushed laughter,--are we wise when we part with them all, or, when compelled to do so, to leave them eagerly? I remember my brother James used to say: “What is our envy for our country friends, but that their homes are permanent and characteristic? Their children’s children may play in the same garden. Each annual festival may summon them to the old hearth. In the meeting-house they sit in the wooden pews where long ago they sat and dreamed of Jerusalem, and now as they sit there, that long ago is fairer than the holy city. Through the open window they see the grass waving softly in the summer air, over old graves dearer to them than many new houses. By a thousand tangible and visible associations they are still, with a peculiar sense of actuality, near to all they love.” Polly would call it a sentimental whim--if she could take Mrs. Croesus’s advice before she spoke of it--but what then? When I was fifteen, I fell desperately in love with Lucy Lamb. “Pooh, pooh,” said my father, “you are romantic, it’s til a whim of yours.” And he succeeded in breaking it up. I went to China, and Lucy married old Firkin, and lived in a splendid house, and now lies in a splendid tomb of Carrara marble, exquisitely sculptured. When I was forty, I came home from China, and the old gentleman said, “I want you to marry Arabella Bobbs, the heiress. It will be a good match.” I said to him, “Pooh, pooh, my dear father, you are mercenary; it’s all a whim of yours.” “My dear son, I know it,” said he, “the whole thing a whim. You can live on a hundred dollars a year, if you choose. But you have the whim of a good dinner, of a statue, of a book. Why not? Only be careful in following your whims, that they really come to something. Have as many whims as you please, but don’t follow them all.”