formally lining either side of a pathway which led from a gate that
opened on the principal street to the front door of the building. The
house itself had been built entirely under the superintendence of a
certain Mr. Richard Jones, whom we have already mentioned, and who,
from his cleverness in small matters, and an entire willingness to
exert his talents, added to the circumstance of their being sisters’
children, ordinarily superintended all the minor concerns of Marmaduke
Temple. Richard was fond of saying that this child of invention
consisted of nothing more nor less than what should form the
groundwork of every clergyman’s discourse, viz., a firstly and a
lastly. He had commenced his labors, in the first year of their
residence, by erecting a tall, gaunt edifice of wood, with its gable
toward the highway. In this shelter for it was little more, the
family resided three years. By the end of that period, Richard had
completed his design. He had availed himself, in this heavy
undertaking, of the experience of a certain wandering eastern
mechanic, who, by exhibiting a few soiled plates of English
architecture, and talking learnedly of friezes, entablatures, and
particularly of the composite order, had obtained a very undue
influence over Richard’s taste in everything that pertained to that
branch of the fine arts. Not that Mr. Jones did not affect to
consider Hiram Doolittle a perfect empiric in his profession, being in
the constant habit of listening to his treatises on architecture with
a kind of indulgent smile; yet, either from an inability to oppose
them by anything plausible from his own stores of learning or from
secret admiration, Richard generally submitted to the arguments of his
co-adjutor. Together, they had not only erected a dwelling for
Marmaduke, but they had given a fashion to the architecture of the
whole county. The composite order, Mr. Doolittle would contend, was
an order composed of many others, and was intended to be the most