been written down, it must have made a volume as large, as solemn,
and as inconvenient as a family Bible. My other nearest neighbor
lives across the road--a widow, Mrs. Walters. I call Mrs. Walters
my mocking-bird, because she reproduces by what is truly a divine
arrangement of the throat the voices of the town. When she flutters
across to the yellow settee under the grape-vine and balances herself
lightly with expectation, I have but to request that she favor me
with a little singing, and soon the air is vocal with every note
of the village songsters. After this, Mrs. Walters usually begins
to flutter in a motherly way around the subject of _my_ symptoms.

Naturally it has been my wish to bring about between this rain-cow
and mocking-bird the desire to pair with one another. For, if a
man always wanted to tell his symptoms and a woman always wished
to hear about them, surely a marriage compact on the basis of such
a passion ought to open up for them a union of overflowing and
indestructible felicity. They should associate as perfectly as the
compensating metals of a pendulum, of which the one contracts as
the other expands. And then I should be a little happier myself.
But the perversity of life! Jacob would never confide in Mrs.
Walter. Mrs. Walters would never inquire for Jacob.

Now poor Jacob is dead, of no complaint apparently, and with so few
symptoms that even the doctors did not know what was the matter,
and the upshot of this talk is that his place has been sold, and
I am to have new neighbors. What a disturbance to a man living on
the edge of a quiet town!

Tidings of the calamity came to-day from Mrs. Walters, who flew
over and sang--sang even on a January afternoon--in a manner to