pleasure of construction to the carpenter? What does architecture
amount to in the experience of the mass of men? I never in all my
walks came across a man engaged in so simple and natural an occupation
as building his house. We belong to the community. It is not the
tailor alone who is the ninth part of a man; it is as much the
preacher, and the merchant, and the farmer. Where is this division
of labor to end? and what object does it finally serve? No doubt
another may also think for me; but it is not therefore desirable
that he should do so to the exclusion of my thinking for myself.

  True, there are architects so called in this country, and I have
heard of one at least possessed with the idea of making
architectural ornaments have a core of truth, a necessity, and hence a
beauty, as if it were a revelation to him. All very well perhaps
from his point of view, but only a little better than the common
dilettantism. A sentimental reformer in architecture, he began at
the cornice, not at the foundation. It was only how to put a core of
truth within the ornaments, that every sugarplum, in fact, might
have an almond or caraway seed in it- though I hold that almonds are
most wholesome without the sugar- and not how the inhabitant, the
indweller, might build truly within and without, and let the ornaments
take care of themselves. What reasonable man ever supposed that
ornaments were something outward and in the skin merely- that the
tortoise got his spotted shell, or the shell-fish its
mother-o'-pearl tints, by such a contract as the inhabitants of
Broadway their Trinity Church? But a man has no more to do with the
style of architecture of his house than a tortoise with that of its
shell: nor need the soldier be so idle as to try to paint the
precise color of his virtue on his standard. The enemy will find it
out. He may turn pale when the trial comes. This man seemed to me to
lean over the cornice, and timidly whisper his half truth to the
rude occupants who really knew it better than he. What of
architectural beauty I now see, I know has gradually grown from within
outward, out of the necessities and character of the indweller, who is
the only builder- out of some unconscious truthfulness, and nobleness,
without ever a thought for the appearance and whatever additional
beauty of this kind is destined to be produced will be preceded by a
like unconscious beauty of life. The most interesting dwellings in
this country, as the painter knows, are the most unpretending,
humble log huts and cottages of the poor commonly; it is the life of
the inhabitants whose shells they are, and not any peculiarity in
their surfaces merely, which makes them picturesque; and equally
interesting will be the citizen's suburban box, when his life shall be
as simple and as agreeable to the imagination, and there is as
little straining after effect in the style of his dwelling. A great
proportion of architectural ornaments are literally hollow, and a
September gale would strip them off, like borrowed plumes, without
injury to the substantials. They can do without architecture who
have no olives nor wines in the cellar. What if an equal ado were made
about the ornaments of style in literature, and the architects of
our bibles 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:

  Boards................................$  8.03 1/2, (mostly shanty

                                                         boards.)

  Refuse shingles for roof and sides....   4.00

  Laths.................................   1.25

  Two second-hand windows with glass....   2.43

  One thousand old brick................   4.00

  Two casks of lime.....................   2.40 (That was high.)

  Hair..................................   0.31 (More than I needed.)

  Mantle-tree iron......................   0.15