cart before the horse is neither beautiful
nor useful. Before we can adorn our houses with beautiful objects the
walls must be stripped, and our lives must be stripped, and beautiful
housekeeping and beautiful living be laid for a foundation: now, a taste
for the beautiful is most cultivated out of doors, where there is no
house and no housekeeper.

Old Johnson, in his "Wonder-Working Providence," speaking of the first
settlers of this town, with whom he was contemporary, tells us that
"they burrow themselves in the earth for their first shelter under some
hillside, and, casting the soil aloft upon timber, they make a smoky
fire against the earth, at the highest side." They did not "provide them
houses," says he, "till the earth, by the Lord's blessing, brought forth
bread to feed them," and the first year's crop was so light that
"they were forced to cut their bread very thin for a long season." The
secretary of the Province of New Netherland, writing in Dutch, in 1650,
for the information of those who wished to take up land there, states
more particularly that "those in New Netherland, and especially in New
England, who have no means to build farmhouses at first according to
their wishes, dig a square pit in the ground, cellar fashion, six or
seven feet deep, as long and as broad as they think proper, case the
earth inside with wood all round the wall, and line the wood with the
bark of trees or something else to prevent the caving in of the earth;
floor this cellar with plank, and wainscot it overhead for a ceiling,
raise a roof of spars clear up, and cover the spars with bark or green
sods, so that they can live dry and warm in these houses with their
entire families for two, three, and four years, it being understood that
partitions are run through those cellars which are adapted to the size
of the family. The wealthy and principal men in New England, in the
beginning of the colonies, commenced their first dwelling-houses in
this fashion for two reasons: firstly, in order not to waste time in
building, and not to want food the next season; secondly, in order not
to discourage poor laboring people whom they brought over in numbers
from Fatherland. In the course of three or four years, when the country
became adapted to agriculture, they built themselves handsome houses,
spending on them several thousands."

In this course which our ancestors took there was a show of prudence
at least, as if their principle were to