faithfully that the timber framework fastened by his hands still
holds together.

Thus the great house was built. Familiar as it stands in the writer's
recollection,--for it has been an object of curiosity with him from
boyhood, both as a specimen of the best and stateliest architecture
of a longpast epoch, and as the scene of events more full of human
interest, perhaps, than those of a gray feudal castle,--familiar as
it stands, in its rusty old age, it is therefore only the more
difficult to imagine the bright novelty with which it first caught
the sunshine. The impression of its actual state, at this distance
of a hundred and sixty years, darkens inevitably through the picture
which we would fain give of its appearance on the morning when the
Puritan magnate bade all the town to be his guests. A ceremony of
consecration, festive as well as religious, was now to be performed.
A prayer and discourse from the Rev. Mr. Higginson, and the outpouring
of a psalm from the general throat of the community, was to be made
acceptable to the grosser sense by ale, cider, wine, and brandy,
in copious effusion, and, as some authorities aver, by an ox, roasted
whole, or at least, by the weight and substance of an ox, in more
manageable joints and sirloins. The carcass of a deer, shot within
twenty miles, had supplied material for the vast circumference of a
pasty. A codfish of sixty pounds, caught in the bay, had been dissolved
into the rich liquid of a chowder. The chimney of the new house,
in short, belching forth its kitchen smoke, impregnated the whole air
with the scent of meats, fowls, and fishes, spicily concocted with
odoriferous herbs, and onions in abundance. The mere smell of such
festivity, making its way to everybody's nostrils, was at once an
invitation and an appetite.