But these are mere household experiences.  Sad though they are, I esteem them as nothing in comparison with my adventures out of doors.  In a dark night, and especially in a night both dark and stormy, I feel myself one of the most wretched beings in existence.  Imagine a vessel lost in the wide ocean, and without a compass, and you will have some faint idea of my perplexity, discouragement, and loneliness at such a time.  I have a strange propensity for shooting off into the gutter, or for shouldering the fences, under the impression that I am pursuing a straight course.  I go quite out of my way to trip over chance stones, or to pick out choice bits of slippery ice.  I splash recklessly through deep puddles, stumble over unfortunate scrapers, walk unexpectedly into open cellars, and lay my length upon wet stone doorsteps.  I start back at visions of posts looming up in the darkness, and whitewashed fences and trees, all of which would be quite unlikely to be standing in the middle of the sidewalk, and which disappear at the first reasonable thought.  I run into harmless passengers as if I would knock the breath of life out of them, and tangle our umbrellas together so fearfully that they spin round and round some time after their separation.  O that umbrella of mine!  Sometimes I hook it in the drooping branches of trees, and, losing my hold in the suddenness of the shock, have the gratification of feeling it tip up, and go down over my shoulder into the mud behind me.  Its bone tips tap and scratch at the windows as I go by, and scrape against the tall fences, like fingers trying to catch at something to hold on by, and stop my progress.  It hits a low branch, and its varnished handle slips through my woollen gloves, knocking my hat over my eyes, and extinguishing me for the time being.  As if the night were not dark enough without!

My friends, I could go on much longer with my complaints, but I feel that I have drawn upon your sympathies sufficiently for the present.  You will be as glad to leave me at my own house-door, as I am to find it.

MISERIES.

No. 3.

TWINE.

Under the general head of string, I might enumerate a long list of this world’s miseries.  Shoe-strings alone comprehend an amount of wretchedness, which is but feebly described in the tragical story of Jemmy String.  Bonnet-strings and apron-strings, dickey-strings and watch-guards, curtain-cord, bed-cord, and cod-line, each and all have furnished enough discomfort to make out a long grumbling article.  But I cannot linger to describe their treacherous desertions when their services are most needed, their unexpected weakness, and their obstinate entanglements when time presses.  A certain pudding-bag string is commemorated in one of the beautiful couplets of Mother Goose’s Melodies.  I am sure you cannot have forgotten it, nor the staring spotted cat that is there represented