2. _Mezzanine Tray._ Dress clothes, neckwear, art goods, _and_ bric-a-brac.
3. _Basement._ Shoes, hardware, suits, underwear, books, medicines, _and_ sporting goods.
Concluding, after due deliberation, that the scissors are equally appropriate to all of these, you start in on the main tray, sliding your palms around the edge as though you were easing ice-cream out of a mold.
You delve deeper, using the back of your hand as a plow-share.
Refusing to be baffled, you leave no garment unturned.
Growing a trifle impatient, you take out the main tray and tackle the mezzanine. This will be a simple matter, because it is so shallow that you have only to feel around the edges.
Perhaps they got shaken into the middle. You burrow there, making considerable work for the clothes-presser.
Now you are genuinely angry. You toss the mezzanine upon the arms of a chair. It is a rocking-chair, and it slides the tray gently forward and deposits it face downward on the floor.
Pretending to ignore this, you plunge both arms into the basement so violently that the lid unclicks and gives you a cowardly blow on the back of the head.
You rise up and vow that this your chattel shall flout you no longer. Seizing it fiercely, you turn it upside down--you dump its contents about the room.
Then there steals into your mind a vision of the above-mentioned cutlery lying on a chiffonier in a room hundreds of miles away--and the realization that they are probably lying there still.
The usual package of seeds has not arrived. Is the Hon. ----, my Representative in Congress, neglecting me? The uncertainty appals.
Year after year this eminent legislator has favored me with floral tributes in kernel form, so that I have come to think of them as my inalienable rights as a constituent. True, as is the case with the thousands of other voters in this urban district which he represents, I have no facilities for horticulture. Living in a New York apartment seven stories up and unequipped with arable soil (the nondescript substance which deposits on my window sills from outshaken mops above would scarcely qualify as loam), I have been at a loss as to what disposition to make of said seeds.
"My dear friend," writes the benevolent legislator, "I am inclosing a list issued by the Department of Agriculture showing bulletins available for free distribution, which contain very valuable information for all classes of readers." And he invites me to choose any six, by number, that he may promptly send them to me.