I’ve taught the baby, who is only twenty-nine months old, to hang up his little cap, and not to climb into the chairs with his shoes on, but I can’t make a model husband of John.  He is as good as gold, but will leave his hat on the floor, his coat on the nearest chair, and never keeps himself or any of his things in order in the house.  He says it’s born with him; comes from a long line of ancestors (he’s been reading Darwin lately) who lived in houses without any cupboards or drawers or closets, and he could no more put away his hat and coat when he comes in than a blue-jay could build a hang-bird’s nest.  Yes; I was vexed, but thankful, too, that Jane was out of sight.  Of all people in the world; she has the least mercy for anything like domestic untidiness.  I only hope she will some time have a house and a husband of her own; if one doesn’t shine and the other shake, her practice will fall a long way behind her preaching.  Let me warn you now, not to attempt making any plans for her.  It will be worry and vexation of spirit from first to last.  Every knot will be examined, every shingle ironed flat before it is laid, every nail counted and driven by rule.  When I tell her it would wear me out, body and mind, to feel obliged to keep things always in order, she gravely reminds me that Mrs. Keep-clean lived ten years longer than Mrs. Clean-up, besides having an easier time, a tidy house, and an enviable reputation all her life.  Yes; I was thankful she had gone philandering off after May-flowers, and hoped she would stay till I had had time to brush up the room and get John into presentable shape.  But as soon as I went to rouse him I was thoroughly frightened.  His face was flushed, his hair was ruffled, and he looked up in such a dazed kind of way, I really thought he was going to have something dreadful.  He held out your letter and told me to read the last sentence, which I did.  Even then I didn’t understand what was the trouble until he went on to say that your final charge was too much for him.  He was totally discouraged.  You began, he said, by urging him to build a stone house, which neither of us liked, though we finally came around to it,—­even went so far as to commence hauling stones.  All at once you went into ecstasies over brickwork, and argued for it as though our hope of salvation lay in our living in a brick house.  Now, as he was beginning to feel that he must change his mind again (he would almost as soon change his head) and cultivate an admiration for brickwork, you must needs switch off upon another track and coolly advise him to build of wood!  He declared he was further from a new house to-day than three months ago.  At that rate we should live in the old one till it tumbled down over our heads, which I don’t propose to do.

[Illustration:  A wise general.]