family fireplaces. The outside door, like that of the barn, was
always divided into upper and lower halves. When the weather
permitted, the upper half could stand open, giving light and air
without the cold draught over the floor where the children were
playing that our wide-swung doors admit. This feature of the Dutch
house and barn certainly merits preservation in our modern
buildings.

The large, unpainted timber barns that succeeded the first Yankee
settlers' log stables were also picturesque, especially when a
lean-to for the cow-stable was added, and the roof carried down with
a long sweep over it; or when the barn was flanked by an open shed
with a hayloft above it, where the hens cackled and hid their
nests, and from the open window of which the hay was always hanging.

Then the great timbers of these barns and the Dutch barn, hewn from
maple or birch or oak trees from the primitive woods, and put in
place by the combined strength of all the brawny arms in the
neighborhood when the barn was raised,--timbers strong enough and
heavy enough for docks and quays, and that have absorbed the odors
of the hay and grain until they look ripe and mellow and full of the
pleasing sentiment of the great, sturdy, bountiful interior! The
"big beam" has become smooth and polished from the hay that has been
pitched over it, and the sweaty, sturdy forms that have crossed it.
One feels that he would like a piece of furniture--a chair, or a
table, or a writing-desk, a bedstead, or a wainscoting--made from
these long-seasoned, long-tried, richly toned timbers of the old
barn. But the smart-painted, natty barn that follows the humbler
structure, with its glazed windows, its ornamented ventilator and
gilded weather vane,--who cares to contemplate it? The wise human