to rock the cradle, fry doughnuts, do the family ironing and coax our stray hens into the coop, all in one motion.  Nor am I impatient to get up in the moonlight with the idea buzzing in my brain that burglars have arrived, and after putting two or three pounds of lead into our best cow, to creep back to bed feeling badly, like a second Alexander, that there’s no more glory.  Really, I haven’t enterprise enough for Danbury.

Now, there are men who ought to start off at once and move into that town.  A wide-awake, bustling fellow, who craves excitement, who is never happy unless whirling around like a bobbin with a ten-per-cent. semi-annual dividend to earn, who is on hand at all the dog-fights, Irish funerals, runaway teams, tenement fires, razor-strop matinees, and public convulsions generally,—­such a man, if he went well recommended, would be likely to find, I imagine, constant employment in the town of Danbury.  He might make arrangements to take his meals on the jump, and would sleep of course with his hat and boots on.  Browne is mercurial.  Browne would be happy in Danbury.  Till he died.  For a fortnight, say—­one brief, glowing, ecstatic fortnight.  Fourteen giddy days would surely finish him.  Imagine Browne (him of the eagle eye) up in the morning, his face washed, hair combed, breakfast taken aboard, and everything trim and tight for sailing out into the surging whirlpool of Danbury locals.  We see him fold the substantial Mrs. B. to his manly bosom and discharge a parent’s duty toward the little Brownes.  We see him tear himself from the bosom of his family.  It is affecting, as those things usually are.

Browne gains the street, backing out of his gate as he blows a superfluous kiss to Miss Tilly Browne, his youngest.  He lurches, just as you may expect, into a stout market-woman laden with eggs and garden vegetables.  She careens wildly, and plunges into a baby-cart that is pushing by.  The darling occupant of fourteen months is smothered in a raw omelet and frescoed over the eye by bunches of asparagus.  The cries of the sweet little cherub would melt the stoutest heart.  The market-lady caracoles around, and leads Browne to infer that his conduct is not approved, from her festooning that gentleman’s eyes with heavy lines of crape.  Mrs. Browne arrives on the scene.  The baby goes into fits.  The fast-assembling crowd cry “Shame!” and Browne, after trying in vain to apologize, seeks the shelter of a hack and makes good his escape.

He descends at Main street, just in time to observe the man with the ladder and paint-pot working his way up along.  That genius is smashing in store fronts and dropping paint liberally on the population.  However, as he does this twice a day regularly through the week, it does not appear to attract much attention, except from strangers.

The fat gentleman who is in training to remove pieces of orange-peel from the sidewalk has already begun his labor of love for the day.  He is just getting up and dusting himself as Browne goes by.  There is nothing fresh in this either, so Browne does not stop.  He merely nods and hurries on.