critically looked about our shack. Oh, that shack, that shack! What a
comedown it was for your heart-sore Chaddie! In the first place, it
seemed no bigger than a ship's cabin, and not one-half so orderly. It is
made of lumber, and not of logs, and is about twelve feet wide and
eighteen feet long. It has three windows, on hinges, and only one door.
The floor is rather rough, and has a trap door leading into a small
cellar, where vegetables can be stored for winter use. The end of the
shack is shut off by a "tarp"--which I have just found out is short for
tarpaulin. In other words, the privacy of my bedroom is assured by
nothing more substantial than a canvas drop-curtain, shutting off my
boudoir, where I could never very successfully _bouder_, from the larger
living-room.

This living-room is also the kitchen, the laundry, the sewing-room, the
reception-room and the library. It has a good big cookstove, which burns
either wood or coal, a built-in cupboard with an array of unspeakably
ugly crockery dishes, a row of shelves for holding canned goods, books
and magazines, cooking utensils, gun-cartridges, tobacco-jars,
carpenter's tools and a coal-oil lamp. There is also a plain pine table,
a few chairs, one rocking-chair which has plainly been made by hand, and
a flour-barrel. Outside the door is a wide wooden bench on which stands
a big tin wash-basin and a cake of soap in a sardine can that has been
punched full of holes along the bottom. Above it hung a roller towel
which looked a little the worse for wear. And that was to be my home, my
one and only habitation, for years and years to come! That little
cat-eyed cubby-hole of a place!

I sat down on an overturned wash-tub about twenty paces from the shack,
and studied it with calm and thoughtful eyes. It looked infinitely worse
from the outside. The reason for this was that the board siding had
first been covered with tar-paper, for the sake of warmth, and over this
had been nailed pieces of tin, tin of every color and size and
description. Some of it was flattened out stove-pipe, and some was
obviously the sides of tomato-cans. Even tin tobacco-boxes and Dundee
marmalade holders and the bottoms of old bake-pans and the sides of an
old wash-boiler had been pieced together and patiently tacked over those
shack-sides. It must have taken weeks and weeks to do. And it suddenly
impressed me as something poignant, as something with the Vergilian
touch of tears in it. It seeme