through a severe course of questions, until I wondered if he was
not some distinguished architect. But he wasn't--he was a
shipping-merchant. It's certainly astonishing how smart some of those
city fellows are about everything.

The upshot was, he gave me the contract, and a very pretty one it was:
ten thousand three hundred and forty dollars. To be sure, he made me
alter the specifications so that the sills should be of stuff ten inches
square, instead of the thin stuff we usually use for the sills of
balloon-frame houses, such as his was to be; and though the alteration
would add quite a few dollars to the cost of materials, I did not dare
to add a cent to my estimate, for fear of losing the contract.
Besides--though, of course, I did not intend to do so dishonorable a
thing--I knew that I could easily make up the difference by using cheap
paint instead of good English lead for priming, or in either one of a
dozen other ways; builders have such tricks, just as ministers and
manufacturers and railroadmen do.

I felt considerably stuck up at getting Markson's house to build, and my
friends said I had a perfect right to feel so, for no house so costly
had been built at Bartley for several years.

So anxious were my friends that I should make a first-class job of it,
that they all dropped in to discuss the plan with me, and to give me
some advice, until--thanks to their thoughtful kindness--my head would
have been in a muddle had the contemplated structure been a cheap barn
instead of a costly villa.

But, by a careful review of the original plan every night after my
friends departed, and a thoughtful study of it each morning before going
to work, I succeeded in completing it according to the ideas of the only
two persons really concerned--I refer to Mr. Markson and myself.

Admitting in advance that there is in the house-building business very
little that teaches a man to be a literary critic, I must nevertheless
say that many poets of ancient and modern times might have found the
building of a house a far more inspiring theme than some upon which they
have written, and even a more respectable one than certain others which
some distinguished rhymers have unfortunately selected.

I have always wondered why, after Mr. Longfellow wrote "The Building of
a Ship," some one did not exercise his muse upon a house. I never
attempted poetry myself, except upon my first baby, and even _those_
verses I transcribed with my lef