in the suburbs it is a miracle that it is ever lived through. The night-winds have not risen yet to stir the languid foliage of the sidewalk maples ; the lamps are not yet lighted to take away the gloom from the blank, staring win- dows of the houses near ; it is too late for letters, too early for a book. In town your fancy would turn to the thea- tres ; in the country you would occupy yourself with cares of poultry or of stock : in the suburbs you can but sit upon your threshold, and fight the predatory mosquito.
THE BRICK MOON.
[From the Papers of Colonel Frederic Ingham.]
II.
How we built it.
THE orange was squeezed dry! And
how little any of us knew,—skilful
George Orcutt, thoughtful Ben Bran-
nan, loyal Haliburton, ingenious Q.,
or poor painstaking I,—how little we
knew, or any of us, where was another
orange, or how we could mix malic acid
and tartaric acid, and citric acid and
auric acid and sugar and water so as
to imitate orange-juice, and fill up the
bank-account enough to draw in the
conditioned subscriptions, and so begin
to build the MOON. How often, as I
lay awake at night, have I added up
the diiferent subscriptions in some new
order, as if that would help the matter :
and how steadily they have come out.
one hundred and sixty-two thousand
dollars, or even less, when I must needs,
in my sleepiness, forget somebody's
name ! So Haliburton put into rail-
road stocks all .the money he collected,
and the rest of us ground on at our mills,
or flew up oh our own wings towards
Heaven. Thus Orcutt built more tun-
nels, Q. prepared for more commence-
ments, Haliburton calculated more pol-
icies, Ben Brannan created more civili-
zation, and I, as I could, healed the
hurt of my people of Naguadavick for
the months there were left to me of my
stay in that thriving town.
None of us had the wit to see how the problem was to be wrought out further. Xo. The best things come to us when we have faithfully and well made all the preparation and done our best ; but they come in some way that is none of ours. So was it now, that to build the BRICK MOON it was ne- cessary that I should be turned out of Naguadavick ignominiously, and that Jeff. Davis and some seven or eight oth- er bad men should create the Great Re- bellion. Hear how it happened.
Dennis Shea, my Double,—other- wise, indeed, called by my name and legally so,—undid me, as my friends supposed, one evening at a public meet- ing called by poor Isaacs in Naguada- vick. Of that transaction I have no oc- casion here to tell the story. But of that transaction one consequence is that the BRICK MOON now moves in ether. I stop writing, to rest my eye upon it, through a little telescope of Alvan Clark's here, which is always trained near it. It is moving on as placidly as ever.
It came about thus. The morning after poor Dennis, whom I have long since forgiven, made his extraordinary speeches, without any authority from me, in the Town Hall at Naguadavick, I thought, and my wife agreed with me, that we had better both leave town with the children. Auchmuty, our dear friend, thought so too. We left in the ten-thirty Accommodation for Skowhe- gan, and so came to Township No. 9 in the 3rd Range, and there for years we resided. That whole range of town-
