I never fancied the country.  Its numerous attractions were no attractions to me.  I cannot harness a horse.  I am afraid of a cow.  I have no fondness for chickens—­unless they are tender and well-cooked.  Like the man in parable, I cannot dig.  I abhor a hoe.  I am fond of flowers but not of dirt, and had rather buy them than cultivate them.  Of all ambition to get the earliest crop of green peas and half ripe strawberries I am innocent.  I like to walk in my neighbor’s garden better than to work in my own.  I do not drink milk, and I do drink coffee; and I had rather run my risk with the average of city milk than with the average of country coffee.  Fresh air is very desirable; but the air on the bleak hills of the Hudson in March is at times a trifle too fresh.  The pure snow as it lies on field, and fence, and tree, is beautiful, I confess.  But when one goes out to walk, it is convenient to have the sidewalks shoveled.

At least that is what I used to think five years ago.  And if my wife had endeavored to argue me out of my convictions, she would only have strengthened them.  But my wife:—­

Stop a minute.  I may as well say here that this book is written in confidence.  It is personal.  It deals with the interior history of a very respectable church and some most respectable families.  It contains a great deal that is not proper to be communicated to the public.  The reader will please bear this in mind.  Whatever I say, particularly what I am going to say now, is confidential.  Don’t mention it.

My wife is a diplomate.  If ever I am president of the United States—­which may Heaven forbid,—­she shall be secretary of State.  She never argues; but she always carries her point.

She always lets me have my own way without hinting an objection.  But it always ends in her having her own.  She would have made no objection to letting Mason and Slidell go—­not the least in the world.  But she would have somehow induced England to entreat us to take them back—­I am sure of it.  She would not have dismissed Catacazy—­not she.  But if she did not like Catacazy, Gortschakoff should have recalled him, and never known why he did it.

“John,” said my wife, “where shall we spend the summer?”

It was six years ago this spring.  We were sitting in the library in our city house, Harry was a baby; and baby was not.  I laid down the Evening Post, and looked up with an incipient groan.

“The usual way I suppose,” said I.  “You’ll go home with the baby, and I—­I shall camp out in New York.”

“Home” is Jennie’s home in Michigan, where she had spent two of the three summers of our married life, while I existed in single misery in my empty house in 38th street.  Oh, the desolateness of those summer experiences.  Oh, the unutterable loneliness of a house without the smile of the dear wife, and the laugh and prattle of the baby boy.  I even missed his cry at night.

“It’s a long, long journey,” said Jennie, “and a long, long way off; and I did resolve last summer I never would put a thousand miles again between me and my true home, John.  For that is not my home—­you are my home.”