Some has always been good to me,—­some has made it a little of a strain to me to get along.  When a woman’s back aches with overworking herself to keep her house in shape, and a dozen mouths are opening at her three times a day, like them little young birds that split their heads open so you can a’most see into their empty stomachs, and one wants this and another wants that, and provisions is dear and rent is high, and nobody to look to,—­then a sharp word cuts, I tell you, and a hard look goes right to your heart.  I’ve seen a boarder make a face at what I set before him, when I had tried to suit him jest as well as I knew how, and I haven’t cared to eat a thing myself all the rest of that day, and I’ve laid awake without a wink of sleep all night.  And then when you come down the next morning all the boarders stare at you and wonder what makes you so low-spirited, and why you don’t look as happy and talk as cheerful as one of them rich ladies that has dinner-parties, where they’ve nothing to do but give a few orders, and somebody comes and cooks their dinner, and somebody else comes and puts flowers on the table, and a lot of men dressed up like ministers come and wait on everybody, as attentive as undertakers at a funeral.

And that reminds me to tell you that I’m agoing to live with my daughter.  Her husband’s a very nice man, and when he isn’t following a corpse, he’s as good company as if he was a member of the city council.  My son, he’s agoing into business with the old Doctor he studied with, and he’s agoing to board with me at my daughter’s for a while,—­I suppose he’ll be getting a wife before long. [This with a pointed look at our young friend, the Astronomer.]

It is n’t but a little while longer that we are going to be together, and I want to say to you gentlemen, as I mean to say to the others and as I have said to our two ladies, that I feel more obligated to, you for the way you ’ve treated me than I know very well how to put into words.  Boarders sometimes expect too much of the ladies that provides for them.  Some days the meals are better than other days; it can’t help being so.  Sometimes the provision-market is n’t well supplied, sometimes the fire in the cooking-stove does n’t burn so well as it does other days; sometimes the cook is n’t so lucky as she might be.  And there is boarders who is always laying in wait for the days when the meals is not quite so good as they commonly be, to pick a quarrel with the one that is trying to serve them so as that they shall be satisfied.  But you’ve all been good and kind to me.  I suppose I’m not quite so spry and quick-sighted as I was a dozen years ago, when my boarder wrote that first book so many have asked me about.  But—­now I’m going to stop taking boarders.  I don’t believe you’ll think much about what I did n’t do,—­because I couldn’t,—­but remember that at any rate I tried honestly to serve you.  I hope God will bless all that set at my table, old and young, rich and poor, merried and single,