I wonder if all Andover boys played at preaching? It certainly was the one sport in our house which never satiated.
Coming in one day, I remember, struggling with certain hopeless purposes of my own, for an afternoon's work, I found the dining-room chairs all nicely set in the order of pews; a table, ornamented with Bible and hymn-books, confronted them; behind it, on a cricket, towered the bigger brother, loudly holding forth. The little brother represented the audience--it was usually the little one who was forced to play this duller _rôle_--and, with open mouth, and with wriggling feet turned in on the rounds of the chair, absorbed as much exhortation as he could suffer.
"My text, brethren," said the little minister, "is, 'Suffer the little children to come unto me.'
"My subject is, _God; Joseph; and Moses in the bulrushes_!"
Discouraged by the alarming breadth of the little preacher's topic, I fled up-stairs again. There an inspiration did, indeed, strike me; for I remembered an old fur cape, or _pelisse_, of my mother's, out of fashion, but the warmer for that; and straightway I got me into it, and curled up, with my papers, on the chilly bed in the cold room, and went to work.
It seems to me that a good part of "The Gates Ajar" was written in that old fur cape. Often I stole up into the attic, or into some unfrequented closet, to escape the noise of the house, while at work. I remember, too, writing sometimes in the barn, on the haymow. The book extended over a wide domestic topography.
I hasten to say that no person was to blame for inconveniences of whose existence I had never complained. Doubtless something would have been done to relieve them had I asked for it; or if the idea that my work could ever be of any consequence had occurred to any of us. Why should it? The girl who is never "domestic" is trial enough at her best. She cannot cook; she will not sew. She washes dishes Mondays and Tuesdays under protest, while the nurse and parlor maid are called off from their natural avocations, and dusts the drawing-room with obedient resentment. She sits cutting out underclothes in the March vacations, when all the schools are closed, and when the heavy wagons from the distant farming region stick in the bottomless Andover mud in front of the professor's house. The big front door is opened, and the dismal, creaking sounds come in.