bestowed by one in habitual communion with "Friendship's Gifts" and
"Affection's Offerings."

Our house on Laura Matilda Street looked somewhat like a toy Swiss
Cottage,--a style of architecture so prevalent, that in walking down the
block it was quite difficult to resist an impression of fresh glue and
pine shavings. The few shade-trees might have belonged originally to
those oval Christmas boxes which contain toy villages; and even the
people who sat by the windows had a stiffness that made them appear
surprisingly unreal and artificial. A little dog belonging to a neighbor
was known to the members of my household by the name of "Glass," from
the general suggestion he gave of having been spun of that article.
Perhaps I have somewhat exaggerated these illustrations of the dapper
nicety of our neighborhood,--a neatness and conciseness which I think
have a general tendency to belittle, dwarf, and contract their objects.
For we gradually fell into small ways and narrow ideas, and to some
extent squared the round world outside to the correct angles of Laura
Matilda Street.

One reason for this insincere quality may have been the fact that the
very foundations of our neighborhood were artificial. Laura Matilda
Street was "made ground." The land, not yet quite reclaimed, was
continually struggling with its old enemy. We had not been long in our
new home before we found an older tenant, not yet wholly divested of
his rights, who sometimes showed himself in clammy perspiration on the
basement walls, whose damp breath chilled our dining-room, and in the
night struck a mortal chilliness through the house. There were no patent
fastenings that could keep him out,--no writ of unlawful detainer that
could eject him. In the winter his presence was quite palpable; he
sapped the roots of the trees, he gurgled under the kitchen floor, he