tain grace of
outline, especially when joined with lean-tos and other additions. The
house partly built in 1636 in Dedham, Massachusetts, by my far-away
grandfather, and known as the Fairbanks House, is the oldest
gambrel-roofed house now standing. It is still occupied by one of his
descendants in the eighth generation. The rear view of it, here given,
shows the picturesqueness of roof outlines and the quaintness which
comes simply from variety. The front of the main building, with its
eight windows, all of different sizes and set at different heights,
shows equal diversity. Within, the boards in the wall-panelling vary
from two to twenty-five inches in width.

The windows of the first houses had oiled paper to admit light. A
colonist wrote back to England to a friend who was soon to follow,
"Bring oiled paper for your windows." The minister, Higginson, sent
promptly in 1629 for glass for windows. This glass was set in the
windows with nails; the sashes were often narrow and oblong, of
diamond-shaped panes set in lead, and opening up and down the middle on
hinges. Long after the large towns and cities had glass windows,
frontier settlements still had heavy wooden shutters. They were a safer
protection against Indian assault, as well as cheaper. It is asserted
that in the province of Kennebec, which is now the state of Maine, there
was not, even as late as 1745, a house that had a square of glass in it.
Oiled paper was used until this century in pioneer houses for windows
wherever it was difficult to transport glass.

Few of the early houses in New England were painted, or colored, as it
was called, either without or within. Painters do not appear in any of
the early lists of workmen. A Salem citizen, just previous to the
Revolution, had the woodwork of one of the rooms of his house painted.
One of a group of friends, discussing this extravagance a few days
later, said: "Well! Archer has set us a fine example of expense,--he has
laid one of his rooms in oil." This sentence shows both the wording and
ideas of the times.

There was one external and suggestive adjunct of the earliest pioneer's
home which was found in nearly all the settlements which were built in
the midst of threatening Indians. Some strong houses were always
surrounded by a stockade, or "palisado," of heavy, well-fitted logs,
which thus formed a garrison, or neighborhood resort, in time of danger.
In the valley of Virginia each settlement was formed of