pitch. Before I had done I was more the friend than the foe of the
pine tree, though I had cut down some of them, having become better
acquainted with it. Sometimes a rambler in the wood was attracted
by the sound of my axe, and we chatted pleasantly over the chips
which I had made.
By the middle of April, for I made no haste in my work, but
rather made the most of it, my house was framed and ready for the
raising. I had already bought the shanty of James Collins, an
Irishman who worked on the Fitchburg Railroad, for boards. James
Collins' shanty was considered an uncommonly fine one. When I
called to see it he was not at home. I walked about the outside, at
first unobserved from within, the window was so deep and high. It
was of small dimensions, with a peaked cottage roof, and not much
else to be seen, the dirt being raised five feet all around as if it
were a compost heap. The roof was the soundest part, though a good
deal warped and made brittle by the sun. Doorsill there was none,
but a perennial passage for the hens under the door board. Mrs. C.
came to the door and asked me to view it from the inside. The hens
were driven in by my approach. It was dark, and had a dirt floor
for the most part, dank, clammy, and aguish, only here a board and
there a board which would not bear removal. She lighted a lamp to
show me the inside of the roof and the walls, and also that the
board floor extended under the bed, warning me not to step into the
cellar, a sort of dust hole two feet deep. In her own words, they
were "good boards overhead, good boards all around, and a good
window" -- of two whole squares originally, only the cat had passed
out that way lately. There was a stove, a bed, and a place to sit,
an infant in the house where it was born, a silk parasol,
gilt-framed looking-glass, and a patent new coffee-mill nailed to an
oak sapling, all told. The bargain was soon concluded, for James