When he read this, Haliburton felt as if they
were not only light-footed but light-headed. And he
consulted me quite seriously as to telegraphing to them
"Pycroft's Course of Reading." I coaxed him out of that,
and he satisfied himself with a serious expostulation
with George as to the way in which their young folks
would grow up. George replied by telegraphing Brannan's
last sermon, I Thessalonians iv. II. The sermon had
four heads, must have occupied an hour and a half in
delivery, and took five nights to telegraph. I had
another engagement, so that Haliburton had to sit it all
out with his eye to Shubael, and he has never entered on
that line of discussion again. It was as well, perhaps,
that he got enough of it.

The women have never had any misunderstandings. When
we had received two or three hundred despatches from B.
M., Annie Haliburton came to me and said, in that pretty
way of hers, that she thought they had a right to their
turn again. She said this lore about the Albert Nyanza
and the North Pole was all very well, but, for her part,
she wanted to know how they lived, what they did, and
what they talked about, whether they took summer
journeys, and how and what was the form of society where
thirty-seven people lived in such close quarters. This
about "the form of society" was merely wool pulled over
my eyes. So she said she thought her husband and I had
better go off to the Biennial Convention at Assampink, as
she knew we wanted to do, and she and Bridget and
Polly and Cordelia would watch for the signals, and would