CHAPTER X.
Living in lodgings, not temporarily, but permanently, sitting down to make one's only "home" in Mrs.Jones's parlor or Mrs.Smith's first floor, of which not a stick or a stone that one looks at is one's own, and whence one may be evicted or evade, with a week's notice or a week's rent, any day--this sort of life is natural and even delightful to some people.

There are those who, like strawberry plants, are of such an errant disposition, that grow them where you will, they will soon absorb all the pleasantness of their habitat, and begin casting out runners elsewhere; may, if not frequently transplanted, would actually wither and die.

Of such are the pioneers of society--the emigrants, the tourists, the travelers round the world; and great is the advantage the world derives from them, active, energetic, and impulsive as they are.

Unless, indeed, their talent for incessant locomotion degenerates into rootless restlessness, and they remain forever rolling stones, gathering no moss, and acquiring gradually a smooth, hard surface, which adheres to nothing, and to which nobody dare venture to adhere.
But there are others possessing in a painful degree this said quality of adhesiveness, to whom the smallest change is obnoxious; who like drinking out of a particular cup, and sitting in a particular chair; to whom even a variation in the position of furniture is unpleasant.
Of course, this peculiarity has its bad side, and yet it is not in itself mean or ignoble.

For is not adhesiveness, faithfulness, constancy--call it what you will--at the root of all citizenship, clanship, and family love?
Is it not the same feeling which, granting they remain at all, makes old friendships dearer than any new?
Nay, to go to the very sacredest and closest bond, is it not that which makes an old man see to the last in his old wife's faded face the beauty which perhaps nobody ever saw except himself, but which he sees and delights in still, simply because it is familiar and his own.
To people who possess a large share of this rare--shall I say fatal ?--characteristic of adhesiveness, living in lodgings is about the saddest life under the sun.