ose of pinning them
fast. A similar opening, but wider, was made at the end for the chimney.
This was built of logs, and made large, to admit of a back and jambs of
stone. At the square, two end logs projected a foot or eighteen inches
beyond the wall, to receive the butting poles, as they were called,
against which the ends of the first row of clapboards was supported.
The roof was formed by making the end logs shorter, until a single log
formed the comb of the roof, on these logs the clapboards were placed,
the ranges of them lapping some distance over those next below them,
and kept in their places by logs, placed at proper distances upon them.

"The roof, and sometimes the floor, were finished on the same day of the
raising. A third day was commonly spent by a few carpenters in leveling
off the floor, making a clapboard door and a table. This last was made
of a split slab, and supported by four round legs set in auger-holes.
Some three-legged stools were made in the same manner. Some pins stuck
in the logs at the back of the house, supported some clapboards which
served for shelves for the table furniture. A single fork, placed with
its lower end in a hole in the floor, and the upper end fastened to a
joist, served for a bedstead, by placing a pole in the fork with one
end through a crack between the logs of the wall. This front pole was
crossed by a shorter one within the fork, with its outer end through
another crack. From the front pole, through a crack between the logs of
the end of the house, the boards were put on which formed the bottom of
the bed. Sometimes other poles were pinned to the fork a little distance
above these, for the purpose of supporting the front and foot of the
bed, while the walls were the supports of its back and head. A few
pegs around the walls for a display of the coats of the women, and
hunting-shirts of the men, and two small forks or buck-horns to a
joist for the rifle and shot-pouch, completed the carpenter work.

"In the mean time masons were at work. With the heart pieces of the
timber of which the clapboards were made, they made billets for chunking
up the cracks between the logs of the cabin and chimney; a large bed of
mortar was made for daubing up these cracks; a few stones formed the
back and jambs of the chimney.

"The cabin being finished, the ceremony of house-warming took place,
before the young couple were permitted to move into it.

"The house-warming was a dance of