"You awful man!" said she.
"Now I will manage," said I.
"Indeed! Nothing would please me better," said she.
"I will sell our house and all that's in it, and get out of debt," said
I.
"You mean to be one of the lower classes and wear old rags," she exclaimed.
"We have no class-distinctions but the Saving Class and the Wasting Class. I shall be of the first class. As to clothes, they are despicable," I replied.
"People who despise clothes can't get any."
"Well, I've done all I'm going to do toward developing the West, which consists in getting into debt, as far as I can see."
When an able woman submits she submits completely. Lydia put our house in order. I filled the streets with dodgers advertising our sale. I have not been a paragraphist for nothing: the sale was a success. I paid a part of my debts, and gave notes for the rest that will keep my future poor. I started in again on the Times' city force. To board I hate: it's a chicken's life—roosting on a perch, coming down to eat and then going back to roost. So I got a little domicile in "The Patch." When the teakettle has begun to spend the evening the new cheap wallpaper, the whitewash and the soapsuds with which the floor has been scrubbed emit peculiar odors.
"It smells poor-folksy here," says Lydia.