eing
in the fall, before a fire became necessary for warmth, doing my cooking
in the meanwhile out of doors on the ground, early in the morning: which
mode I still think is in some respects more convenient and agreeable
than the usual one. When it stormed before my bread was baked, I fixed
a few boards over the fire, and sat under them to watch my loaf, and
passed some pleasant hours in that way. In those days, when my hands
were much employed, I read but little, but the least scraps of paper
which lay on the ground, my holder, or tablecloth, afforded me as much
entertainment, in fact answered the same purpose as the Iliad.

It would be worth the while to build still more deliberately than I did,
considering, for instance, what foundation a door, a window, a cellar,
a garret, have in the nature of man, and perchance never raising any
superstructure until we found a better reason for it than our temporal
necessities even. There is some of the same fitness in a man's building
his own house that there is in a bird's building its own nest. Who
knows but if men constructed their dwellings with their own hands, and
provided food for themselves and families simply and honestly enough,
the poetic faculty would be universally developed, as birds universally
sing when they are so engaged? But alas! we do like cowbirds and
cuckoos, which lay their eggs in nests which other birds have built, and
cheer no traveller with their chattering and unmusical notes. Shall we
forever resign the pleasure of construction to the carpenter? What does
architecture amount to in the experience of the mass of men? I never
in all my walks came across a man engaged in so simple and natural an
occupation as building his house. We belong to the community. It is
not the tailor alone who is the ninth part of a man; it is as much the
preacher, and the merchant, and the farmer. Where is this division of
labor to end? and what object does it finally serve? No doubt another
may also think for me; but it is not therefore desirable that he should
do so to the exclusion of my thinking for myself.

True, there are architects so called in this country, and I have
heard of one at least possessed with the idea of making architectural
ornaments have a core of truth, a necessity, and hence a beauty, as if
it were a revelation to him. All very well perhaps from his point
of view, but only a little better than the common dilettantism. A
sentimental reformer in architect