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1At length, in the beginning of May, with the help of some of my acquaintances, rather to improve so good an occasion for
2neighborliness than from any necessity, I set up the frame of my house. No man was ever more honored in the character of
3his raisers than I. They are destined, I trust, to assist at the raising of loftier structures one day. I began to
4occupy my house on the 4th of July, as soon as it was boarded and roofed, for the boards were carefully feather-edged
5and lapped, so that it was perfectly impervious to rain; but before boarding I laid the foundation of a chimney at one
6end, bringing two cartloads of stones up the hill from the pond in my arms. I built the chimney after my hoeing in the
7fall, before a fire became necessary for warmth, doing my cooking in the mean while out of doors on the ground, early in
8the morning: which mode I still think is in some respects more convenient and agreeable than the usual one. When it
9stormed before my bread was baked, I fixed a few boards over the fire, and sat under them to watch my loaf, and passed
10some pleasant hours in that way. In those days, when my hands were much employed, I read but little, but the least
11scraps of paper which lay on the ground, my holder, or tablecloth, afforded me as much entertainment, in fact answered
12the same purpose as the Iliad. It would be worth the while to build still more deliberately than I did, considering, for
13instance, what foundation a door, a window, a cellar, a garret, have in the nature of man, and perchance never raising
14any superstructure until we found a better reason for it than our temporal necessities even. There is some of the same
15fitness in a man's building his own house that there is in a bird's building its own nest. Who knows but if men
16constructed their dwellings with their own hands, and provided food for themselves and families simply and honestly
17enough, the poetic faculty would be universally developed, as birds universally sing when they are so engaged? But alas!
18we do like cowbirds and cuckoos, which lay their eggs in nests which other birds have built, and cheer no traveller with
19their chattering and unmusical notes. Shall we forever resign the pleasure of construction to the carpenter? What does
20architecture amount to in the experience of the mass of men? I never in all my walks came across a man engaged in so
21simple and natural an occupation as building his house. We belong to the community. It is not the tailor alone who is
22the ninth part of a man; it is as much the preacher, and the merchant, and the farmer. Where is this division of labor
23to end? and what object does it finally serve? No doubt another may also think for me; but it is not therefore desirable
24that he should do so to the exclusion of my thinking for myself. True, there are architects so called in this country,
25and I have heard of one at least possessed with the idea of making architectural ornaments have a core of truth, a
26necessity, and hence a beauty, as if it were a revelation to him. All very well perhaps from his point of view, but only
27a little better than the common dilettantism. A sentimental reformer in architecture, he began at the cornice, not at
28the foundation. It was only how to put a core of truth within the ornaments, that every sugar plum in fact might have an
29almond or caraway seed in it,--though I hold that almonds are most wholesome without the sugar,--and not how the
30inhabitant, the indweller, might build truly within and without, and let the ornaments take care of themselves. What
31reasonable man ever supposed that ornaments were something outward and in the skin merely,--that the tortoise got his
32spotted shell, or the shellfish its mother-o'-pearl tints, by such a contract as the inhabitants of Broadway their
33Trinity Church? But a man has no more to do with the style of architecture of his house than a tortoise with that of its
34shell: nor need the soldier be so idle as to try to paint the precise color of his virtue on his standard. The enemy
35will find it out. He may turn pale when the trial comes. This man seemed to me to lean over the cornice, and timidly
36whisper his half truth to the rude occupants who really knew it better than he. What of architectural beauty I now see,
37I know has gradually grown from within outward, out of the necessities and character of the indweller, who is the only
38builder,--out of some unconscious truthfulness, and nobleness, without ever a thought for the appearance and whatever
39additional beauty of this kind is destined to be produced will be preceded by a like unconscious beauty of life. The
40most interesting dwellings in this country, as the painter knows, are the most unpretending, humble log huts and
41cottages of the poor commonly; it is the life of the inhabitants whose shells they are, and not any peculiarity in their
42surfaces merely, which makes them picturesque; and equally interesting will be the citizen's suburban box, when his life
43shall be as simple and as agreeable to the imagination, and there is as little straining after effect in the style of
44his dwelling. A great proportion of architectural ornaments are literally hollow, and a September gale would strip them
45off, like borrowed plumes, without injury to the substantials. They can do without architecture who have no olives nor
46wines in the cellar. What if an equal ado were made about the ornaments of style in literature, and the architects of
47our bibles spent as much time about their cornices as the architects of our churches do? So are made the belles-lettres
48and the beaux-arts and their professors. Much it concerns a man, forsooth, how a few sticks are slanted over him or
49under him, and what colors are daubed upon his box. It would signify somewhat, if, in any earnest sense, he slanted them
50and daubed it; but the spirit having departed out of the tenant, it is of a piece with constructing his own coffin,--the
51architecture of the grave, and "carpenter" is but another name for "coffin-maker." One man says, in his despair or
52indifference to life, take up a handful of the earth at your feet, and paint your house that color. Is he thinking of
53his last and narrow house? Toss up a copper for it as well. What an abundance of leisure he must have! Why do you take
54up a handful of dirt? Better paint your house your own complexion; let it turn pale or blush for you. An enterprise to
55improve the style of cottage architecture! When you have got my ornaments ready I will wear them. Before winter I built
56a chimney, and shingled the sides of my house, which were already impervious to rain, with imperfect and sappy shingles
57made of the first slice of the log, whose edges I was obliged to straighten with a plane. I have thus a tight shingled
58and plastered house, ten feet wide by fifteen long, and eight-feet posts, with a garret and a closet, a large window on
59each side, two trap doors, one door at the end, and a brick fireplace opposite. The exact cost of my house, paying the
60usual price for such materials as I used, but not counting the work, all of which was done by myself, was as follows;
61and I give the details because very few are able to tell exactly what their houses cost, and fewer still, if any, the
62separate cost of the various materials which compose them:-- Boards.......................... $ 8.03½, mostly shanty
63boards. Refuse shingles for roof sides,.. 4.00 Laths,........................... 1.25 Two second-hand windows with
64glass,................... 2.43 One thousand old brick,.......... 4.00 Two casks of lime,............... 2.40 That was
65high. Hair,............................ 0.31 More than I needed. Mantle-tree iron,................ 0.15
66Nails,........................... 3.90 Hinges and screws,............... 0.14 Latch,........................... 0.10
67Chalk,........................... 0.01 Transportation,.................. 1.40 I carried a good part -------- on my back.
68In all,..................... $28.12½ These are all the materials excepting the timber stones and sand, which I claimed
69by squatter's right. I have also a small wood-shed adjoining, made chiefly of the stuff which was left after building
70the house. I intend to build me a house which will surpass any on the main street in Concord in grandeur and luxury, as
71soon as it pleases me as much and will cost me no more than my present one.
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