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Support the Monkey! Tell All your Friends and Teachers |
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Support the Monkey! Tell All your Friends and Teachers |
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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, for-sooth, 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 Nails......................................................... 3.90 Hinges and screws.................................... 0.14 Latch......................................................... 0.10 Chalk........................................................ 0.01 Transportation.......................................... 1.40 (I carried a good part on my back.) ----In all................... $ 28.12 1/2 These are all the materials, excepting the timber, stones, and sand, |
