illed up where
they ought not to be, or left out where they ought to be filled; then
the frost will go through one and the rats the other. If he uses
colored mortar, it will be too dark or too light, or too
something,--then he'll be obliged to paint the whole wall. The drains
won't be put in the right place, or they'll pitch the wrong way; then
he'll have to dig out new ones. The receivers for the stove-pipes will
be forgotten or set in the ventilating-flues; then he might as well
have no chimney. The masons will drop bricks and mortar and trowels
down the flues; then he'll have to climb upon the roof with a brick
tied to a rope and try to churn them out. Just at the place where the
flues ought to be plastered outside and in, against the floor and roof
timbers, the masons can't reach, and like as not they'll turn a brick
up edgewise if a joist happens to crowd; then his house will burn up
and never give him any more trouble.

The war with the masons is short and sharp; that with the carpenters
long and tedious. There are ten thousand ways you don't want a thing
done, only one that suits you. Setting partitions looks like easy
work; I don't believe a house was ever built in which all of them and
the doors through them were in just the right places. I know they 're
not in mine. I'd give three times the cost of the door if one of them
could be moved, two inches, and as much more if another could be made
six inches wider. I tried to have one of the mantels set in the middle
of one side of the room, but somehow it got fixed just enough away
from the centre to look everlastingly awkward.

The rough work gets covered up pretty quickly, but it pays to keep
watch and see that the spikes are put in where they belong; that the
back plastering reaches quite up to the plate and down to the sill;
that timbers are not left without visible means of support, or hung by
"toe-nails" when they ought to be well framed and pinned. It's hard to
make a carpenter believe that plastering cracks because his joists
and furrings and studs won't hang together, but it's true a good many
times. You like, also, to have something more than a good man's
assurance, that the furnace pipes are "all right," and will sleep
better on windy nights if you have seen all exposed corners guarded by
a double lining.

The gas-man had his work to do over because some of the drop-lights
were not in the centre of the ceilings.

I tremble to think of what might have