is allowed to run wild, as though his moonshine was brighter than that
of other folks, I think it's time to call the meeting to order.

While you have been gossiping I have been at work, and now our house
is almost done,--that is to say, it's well begun. The stone walls of
the first story are finished, the frame is raised and covered. I've
done one thing without asking anybody's advice; covered the roof with
the best cedar shingles I could find. I hired an honest man to lay
them, who would throw out all that were dubious and lay the
cross-grained ones right side up, and painted the tin valleys both
sides before the shingles were laid. Then I took the difference in
cost between this and a good slate roof and put it in the
savings-bank. At the end of twenty years, if my roof lasts as long, my
deposit will put on the best kind of a slate roof and leave three
hundred dollars to go to the Society for the Promotion of Fine Art in
General and Rural Architecture in Particular. I know the shingled roof
may burn me up, if the chimney should happen to take fire some windy
night, but 't won't cost so much for repairs as slate if they should
blow over, either all at once, or one brick at a time. My neighbors
may not like the looks, especially while it's new; but if we have
nothing uglier than a mellow gray-shingled roof, I don't think
anybody'll be hurt. I wish we had something like the tile roofs I've
seen in foreign pictures. They'd go first-rate with my stone walls.

The eave-spouts bother me. I don't need to save the water from the
roof, and have concluded to let it pour where it pleases. The porches
protect the doorsteps, and I think it will be easier to take care of
it after it falls than to hang gutters all around emptying at the
corners and angles. They are troublesome things anyway. The leaves
clog them, the ice dams them, the snow comes down in an avalanche and