Had it been otherwise I might have borne his remarks more complacently, but to be continually told what you ought to do, and to know that you ought to do it, is extremely annoying.
He was very anxious that I should take off the rudder, which was certainly useless to a boat situated as ours was, and make an ironing-table of it.

I persisted that the laws of symmetrical propriety required that the rudder should remain where it was--that the very name of our home would be interfered with by its removal, but he insisted that "Ironing-table Grange" would be just as good a name, and that symmetrical propriety in such a case did not amount to a row of pins.
The result was, that we did have the ironing-table, and that Euphemia was very much pleased with it.

A great many other improvements were projected and carried out by him, and I was very much worried.

He made a flower-garden for Euphemia on the extreme forward-deck, and having borrowed a wheelbarrow, he wheeled dozens of loads of arable dirt up our gang-plank and dumped them out on the deck.

When he had covered the garden with a suitable depth of earth, he smoothed it off and then planted flower-seeds.