useful of all, for it admitted into its construction such alterations
as convenience or circumstances might require. To this proposition
Richard usually assented; and when rival geniuses who monopolize not
only all the reputation but most of the money of a neighborhood, are
of a mind, it is not uncommon to see them lead the fashion, even in
graver matters. In the present instance, as we have already hinted,
the castle, as Judge Templeton’s dwelling was termed in common
parlance, came to be the model, in some one or other of its numerous
excellences, for every aspiring edifice within twenty miles of it.

The house itself, or the “ lastly,” was of stone: large, square, and
far from uncomfortable. These were four requisites, on which
Marmaduke had insisted with a little more than his ordinary
pertinacity. But everything else was peaceably assigned to Richard
and his associate. These worthies found the material a little too
solid for the tools of their workmen, which, in General, were employed
on a substance no harder than the white pine of the adjacent
mountains, a wood so proverbially soft that it is commonly chosen by
the hunters for pillows. But for this awkward dilemma, it is probable
that the ambitious tastes of our two architects would have left us
much more to do in the way of description. Driven from the faces of
the house by the obduracy of the material, they took refuge in the
porch and on the roof. The former, it was decided, should be severely
classical, and the latter a rare specimen of the merits of the
Composite order.

A roof, Richard contended, was a part of the edifice that the ancients
always endeavored to conceal, it being an excrescence in architecture
that was only to be tolerated on account of its usefulness. Besides,
as he wittily added, a chief merit in a dwelling was to present a