All day long the house is full of racket:  “Look out how you scratch that table!” “There! you have dropped the leg out of that piano!” “There goes the looking-glass!” “Ouch! you have smashed my finger!” “Didn’t you see you were pushing me against the wall?” “Get out of our way!  It’s one o’clock, and your things are not half moved!  Carmen! take hold and tumble these things into the street!” Our carmen and theirs get into a fight.  Our servants on our side, their servants on theirs.  We, opposed to anything but peace, try to quiet the strife, yet, if they must go on, feel we would like to have our men triumph.  Like England during our late war, we remain neutral, yet have our preferences as to which shall beat.  Now dash comes the rain, and the water cools off the heat of the combatants.  The carmen must drive fast, so as to get the things out of the wet, but slow, so as not to rub the furniture.

As our last load starts we go in to take a farewell look at the old place.  In that parlor we have been gay with our friends many a time, and as we glance round the room we seem to see the great group of their faces.  The best furniture we ever had in our parlor was a circle of well-wishers.  Here is the bed-room where we slept off the world’s cares, and got up glad as the lark when the morning sky beckons it upward.  Many a time this room has been full of sleep from door-sill to ceiling.  We always did feel grandly after we had put an eight-hour nap between us and life’s perplexities.  We are accustomed to divide our time into two parts:  the first to be devoted to hard, blistering, consuming work, and the rest to be given to the most jubilant fun; and sleep comes under the last head.

We step into the nursery for a last look.  The crib is gone, and the doll babies and the blockhouses, but the echoes have not yet stopped galloping; May’s laugh, and Edith’s glee, and Frank’s shout, as he urged the hobby-horse to its utmost speed, both heels struck into the flanks, till out of his glass eye the horse seemed to say: 

“Do that again, and I will throw you to the other side of the trundle-bed!” Farewell, old house!  It did not suit us exactly, but thank God for the good times we had in it!

Moving-day is almost gone.  It is almost night.  Tumble everything into the new house.  Put up the bedsteads.  But who has the wrench, and who the screws?  Packed up, are they?  In what box?  It may be any one of the half dozen.  Ah! now I know in which box you will find it; in the last one you open!  Hungry, are you?  No time to talk of food till the crockery is unpacked.  True enough, here they come.  That last jolt of the cart finished the teacups.  The jolt before that fractured some of the plates, and Bridget now drops the rest of them.  The Paradise of crockery-merchants is moving-day.  I think, from the results which I see, that they must about the first of May spend most of their time in praying for success in business.