spent as much time about their cornices as the architects of our
churches do? So are made the belles-lettres and the beaux-arts and
their professors. Much it concerns a man, forsooth, how a few
sticks are slanted over him or under him, and what colors are daubed
upon his box. It would signify somewhat, if, in any earnest sense,
he slanted them and daubed it; but the spirit having departed out of
the tenant, it is of a piece with constructing his own coffin -- the
architecture of the grave -- and "carpenter" is but another name for
"coffin-maker." One man says, in his despair or indifference to
life, take up a handful of the earth at your feet, and paint your
house that color. Is he thinking of his last and narrow house?
Toss up a copper for it as well. What an abundance of leisure be
must have! Why do you take up a handful of dirt? Better paint your
house your own complexion; let it turn pale or blush for you. An
enterprise to improve the style of cottage architecture! When you
have got my ornaments ready, I will wear them.
Before winter I built a chimney, and shingled the sides of my
house, which were already impervious to rain, with imperfect and
sappy shingles made of the first slice of the log, whose edges I was
obliged to straighten with a plane.
I have thus a tight shingled and plastered house, ten feet wide
by fifteen long, and eight-feet posts, with a garret and a closet, a
large window on each side, two trap doors, one door at the end, and
a brick fireplace opposite. The exact cost of my house, paying the
usual price for such materials as I used, but not counting the work,
all of which was done by myself, was as follows; and I give the
details because very few are able to tell exactly what their houses
cost, and fewer still, if any, the separate cost of the various
materials which compose them:--