Days before, the work of packing commenced.  It is astonishing how many boxes and barrels are required to contain all your wares.  You come upon a thousand things that you had forgotten, too good to throw away and too poor to keep:  old faded carpet-bags that would rouse the mirth of the town if you dared to carry them into the street; straw hats out of the fashion; beavers that you ought to have given away while they might have been useful; odd gloves, shoes, coats and slips of carpet that have been the nest of rats, and a thousand things that you laid away because you some day might want them, but never will.

For the last few days in the old house the accommodations approach the intolerable.  Everything is packed up.  The dinner comes to you on shattered crockery which is about to be thrown away, and the knives are only painful reminiscences of what they once were.  The teapot that we used before we got our “new set” comes on time to remind us how common we once were.  You can upset the coffee without soiling the table-cloth, for there is none.  The salt and sugar come to you in cups looking so much alike that you find out for the first time how coffee tastes when salted, or fish when it is sweetened.  There is no place to sit down, and you have no time to do so if you found one.  The bedsteads are down, and you roll into the corner at night, a self-elected pauper, and all the night long have a quarrel with your pillow, which persists in getting out of bed, and your foot wanders out into the air, feeling for greater length of cover.  If the children cry in the night, you will not find the matches nor the lamp nor anything else save a trunk just in time to fall over it, getting up with confused notions as to which is the way to bed, unless there be some friendly voice to hail you through the darkness.

The first of May dawns.  The carts come.  It threatens rain, but not a drop until you get your best rosewood chairs out of doors, and your bedding on the top of the wagon.  Be out at twelve o’clock you must, for another family are on your heels, and Thermopylae was a very tame pass compared with the excitement which rises when two families meet in the same hall—­these moving out and those moving in.  They swear, unless they have positive principles to prohibit.  A mere theory on the subject of swearing will be no hindrance.  Long-established propriety of speech, buttressed up by the most stalwart determination is the only safety.  Men who talk right all the rest of the year sometimes let slip on the first of May.  We know a member of the church who uses no violence of speech except on moving day, and then he frequently cries out:  “By the great United States!”