But this was not the worst of it.  The new furniture and new carpet formed an opposition party in the room.  I believe in my heart that for every little household fairy that went out with the dear old things there came in a tribe of discontented brownies with the new ones.  These little wretches were always twitching at the gowns of my wife and daughters, jogging their elbows, and suggesting odious comparisons between the smart new articles and what remained of the old ones.  They disparaged my writing-table in the corner; they disparaged the old-fashioned lounge in the other corner, which had been the maternal throne for years; they disparaged the work-table, the work-basket, with constant suggestions of how such things as these would look in certain well-kept parlors where new-fashioned furniture of the same sort as ours existed.

“We don’t have any parlor,” said Jane, one day.  “Our parlor has always been a sort of log-cabin,—­library, study, nursery, greenhouse, all combined.  We never have had things like other people.”

“Yes, and this open fire makes such a dust; and this carpet is one that shows every speck of dust; it keeps one always on the watch.”

“I wonder why papa never had a study to himself; I’m sure I should think he would like it better than sitting here among us all.  Now there’s the great south-room off the dining-room; if he would only move his things there, and have his open fire, we could then close up the fireplace, and put lounges in the recesses, and mamma could have her things in the nursery,—­and then we should have a parlor fit to be seen.”

I overheard all this, though I pretended not to,—­the little busy chits supposing me entirely buried in the recesses of a German book over which I was poring.

There are certain crises in a man’s life when the female element in his household asserts itself in dominant forms that seem to threaten to overwhelm him.  The fair creatures, who in most matters have depended on his judgment, evidently look upon him at these seasons as only a forlorn, incapable male creature, to be cajoled and flattered and persuaded out his native blindness and absurdity into the fairy-land of their wishes.

“Of course, mamma,” said the busy voices, “men can’t understand such things.  What can men know of housekeeping, and how things ought to look?  Papa never goes into company; he don’t know and don’t care how the world is doing, and don’t see that nobody now is living as we do.”

“Aha, my little mistresses, are you there?” I thought; and I mentally resolved on opposing a great force of what our politicians call backbone to this pretty domestic conspiracy.

“When you get my writing-table out of this corner, my pretty dears, I’d thank you to let me know it.”

Thus spake I in my blindness, fool that I was.  Jupiter might as soon keep awake, when Juno came in best bib and tucker, and with the cestus of Venus, to get him to sleep.  Poor Slender might as well hope to get the better of pretty Mistress Anne Page, as one of us clumsy-footed men might endeavor to escape from the tangled labyrinth of female wiles.