When the frame was at last complete, the weary men retired to a
convenient distance to look it over; and then they emphasized their
approval of the structure by three rousing cheers.

"Be gorry, Jim, ye must make us a spache," said Mike Conlin. "Ye've
plenty iv blarney; now out wid it."

But Jim was sober. He was awed by the magnitude of his enterprise. There
was the building in open outline. There was no going back. For better or
for worse, it held his destiny, and not only his, but that of one
other--perhaps of others still.

"A speech! a speech!" came from a dozen tongues.

"Boys," said Jim, "there's no more talk in me now nor there is in one o'
them chips. I don't seem to have no vent. I'm full, but it don't run. If
I could stick a gimblet in somewhere, as if I was a cider-barrel, I
could gi'en ye enough; but I ain't no barrel, an' a gimblet ain't no
use. There's a man here as can talk. That's his trade, an' if he'll say
what I ought to say, I shall be obleeged to 'im. Yates is a lawyer, an'
it's his business to talk for other folks, an' I hope he'll talk for
me."

"Yates! Yates!" arose on all sides.

Yates was at home in any performance of this kind, and, mounting a low
stump, said:

"Boys, Jim wants me to thank you for the great service you've rendered
him. You have come a long distance to do a neighborly deed, and that
deed has been generously completed. Here, in these forest shades, you
have reared a monument to human civilization. In these old woods you
have built a temple to the American household gods. The savage beasts of
the wilderness will fly from it, and the birds will gather around it.
The winter will be the warmer for the fire that will burn within it, and
the spring will come earlier in prospect of a better welcome. The river
that washes its feet will be more musical in its flow, because finer
ears will be listening. The denizens of the great city will come here,
year after year, to renew their wasted strength, and they will carry
back with them the sweetest memories of these pure solitudes.

"To build a human home, where woman lives and little children open their
eyes upon life, and grow up and marry and die--a home full of love and
toil, of pleasure and hope and hospitality, is to do the finest thing
that a man can do. I congratulate you on what you have done for Jim, and
what so nobly you have done for yourselves. Your whole life will be
sweeter for this service, and when you think of