Part 5 (1/2)

As roinning

If they brought azine, and required me to build a story to it, they would cover the rest of the page with their pudgy hands to keepan idea from it The stories had to coinal and fresh

Sometimes the children furnished me simply a character or two, or a dozen, and required me to start out at once on that sliorous and entertaining life of crime If they heard of a new trade, or an unfa like that, I was pretty sure to have to deal with those things in the next romance Once Clara required unstrictor,” and I had to do it She didn't knohat a boa-constrictor was, until he developed in the tale--then she was better satisfied with it than ever

_Froame is billiards, and when he is tired and wishes to rest hiht and plays billiards, it seereat deal almost incessantly He has the s he cant understand Our burglar-alared to take the ether for a ti even when the ht that perhaps the burglar-alarly he put it on and then went down and opened the ; consequently the alar, it would even if the alarly upstairs and said to o on I have just opened theto see”

”Why, Youth,” mamma replied ”if you've opened the hy of coarse the alar!”

”That's what I've opened it for, why I just went down to see if it would ring!”

Mao and see whether the alaro and open the --but in vain, papa couldn't understand, and got very i totrue

This is a frank biographer, and an honest one; she uses no sand-paper on me I have, to this day, the same dull head in the matter of conundruone days

Coressive feeling presently war of the commonest and simplest contract--with its ”parties of the first part,”

and ”parties of the second part,” and ”parties of the third part,”--before one Ashcroft comes up here every day and pathetically tries to make me understand the points of the lawsuit which we are conducting against Henry butters, Harold Wheeler, and the rest of those Plasive it up It is pitiful to see, when he bends his earnest and appealing eyes upon me and says, after one of his efforts, ”Now you _do_ understand _that_, don't you?”

I aed to say, ”I _don't_, Ashcroft I wish I could understand it, but I don't Send for the cat”

In the days which Susy is talking about, a perplexity fell to ent, and he brought y We drove by the _porte-cochere_ and toward the stable Now this was a _single_ road, and was like a spoon whose handle stretched frohborhood of the stable At the approach to the flower-bed the road divided and circu a loop, which I have likened to the bowl of the spoon As we neared the loop, I saw that Whit on the starboard side--the side the house was on), and was going to start around that spoon-bowl on that left-hand side I said,

”Don't do that, Whitht-hand side Then I shall be next to the house e get to the door”

He said, ”_That_ will not happen in _any case_, it doesn't o around this flower-bed”

I explained to him that he was an ass, but he stuck to his proposition, and I said,

”Go on and try it, and see”

He went on and tried it, and sure enough he fetched me up at the door on the very side that he had said I would be I was not able to believe it then, and I don't believe it yet

I said, ”Whitain”

He said he could--and he drove down into the street, fetched around, caain I was stupefied, paralyzed, petrified, with these strange results, but they did not convince me I didn't believe he could do it another time, but he did He said he could do it all day, and fetch up the saone, and I asked hio home and apply to the Asylum and I would pay the expenses; I didn't want to see hie and started to tell Livy about it, expecting to get her sympathy for me and to breed aversion in her for Whithter, as the tale of my adventure went on, for her head was like Susy's: riddles and complexities had no terrors for it Her mind and Susy's were analytical; I have tried to make it appear that y experiainst hope that I would some time or other find somebody ould be on o glibly forward and state the circu to halt and consider, and call up in y and the horse, and ot that far and try to turn it to the left it goes to ruin; I can't see how it is ever going to fetch ht in her estilar-alaray and careless life, and had no principles It was generally out of order at one point or another; and there was plenty of opportunity, because all the s and doors in the house, from the cellar up to the top floor, were connected with it However, in its seasons of being out of order it could trouble us for only a very little while: we quickly found out that it was fooling us, and that it was buzzing its blood-curdling alarm merely for its own amusement Then ould shut it off, and send to New York for the electrician--there not being one in all Hartford in those days When the repairs were finished ould set the alarain and reestablish our confidence in it It never did any real business except upon one single occasion All the rest of its expensive career was frivolous and without purpose Just that one tiravely, seriously, admirably It let fly about two o'clock one black and dreary March , and I turned out pro, this time The bath-room door was on as, looked at the annunciator, and turned off the alar the racket Then I came back to bed Mrs Clemens opened the debate:

”What was it?”