After I reached home came supper and the delightful evening hours,
when over my pipe (I had given up cigars, as being too expensive
and inappropriate, and had taken to a tall pipe and canaster
tobacco) we talked and planned, and told each other our day's
experience.

One of our earliest subjects of discussion was the name of our
homestead. Euphemia insisted that it should have a name. I was
quite willing, but we found it no easy matter to select an
appropriate title. I proposed a number of appellations intended to
suggest the character of our home. Among these were: "Safe
Ashore," "Firmly Grounded," and some other names of that style, but
Euphemia did not fancy any of them. She wanted a suitable name, of
course, she said, but it must be something that would SOUND like a
house and BE like a boat.

"Partitionville," she objected to, and "Gangplank Terrace," did not
suit her because it suggested convicts going out to work, which
naturally was unpleasant.

At last, after days of talk and cogitation, we named our house
"Rudder Grange."

To be sure, it wasn't exactly a grange, but then it had such an
enormous rudder that the justice of that part of the title seemed
to over-balance any little inaccuracy in the other portion.

But we did not spend all our spare time in talking. An hour or
two, every evening was occupied in what we called "fixing the
house," and gradually the inside of our abode began to look like a