nothing to think of in your poor empty head, and nothing to do with your
poor idle hands. And so it ends in your spoiling canvas with paints, and
making a smell in the house; or in keeping tadpoles in a glass box full
of dirty water, and turning everybody's stomach in the house; or in
chipping off bits of stone here, there, and everywhere, and dropping
grit into all the victuals in the house; or in staining your fingers
in the pursuit of photography, and doing justice without mercy on
everybody's face in the house. It often falls heavy enough, no doubt, on
people who are really obliged to get their living, to be forced to work
for the clothes that cover them, the roof that shelters them, and the
food that keeps them going. But compare the hardest day's work you
ever did with the idleness that splits flowers and pokes its way into
spiders' stomachs, and thank your stars that your head has got something
it MUST think of, and your hands something that they MUST do.

As for Mr. Franklin and Miss Rachel, they tortured nothing, I am glad
to say. They simply confined themselves to making a mess; and all they
spoilt, to do them justice, was the panelling of a door.

Mr. Franklin's universal genius, dabbling in everything, dabbled in what
he called "decorative painting." He had invented, he informed us, a new
mixture to moisten paint with, which he described as a "vehicle."
What it was made of, I don't know. What it did, I can tell you in two
words--it stank. Miss Rachel being wild to try her hand at the new
process, Mr. Franklin sent to London for the materials; mixed them up,
with accompaniment of a smell which made the very dogs sneeze when they
came into the room; put an apron and a bib over Miss Rachel's gown, and
set her to work decorating her own little sitting-room--called, for want
of English to name it in, her "boudoir." They began with the inside
of the door. Mr. Franklin scraped off all the nice varnish with