ng a tall totem-pole (Fig. 255) for your family totem or the totem
of your clan. Fig. 252 shows how to arrange and cut your logs for the
pens. The dining-room is supposed to be behind the half partition next to
the kitchen; the other half of this room being open, with the front room,
it makes a large living-room. The stairs lead up to the sleeping-rooms
overhead; the latter are made by dividing the space with partitions to
suit your convenience.

Before Building

Take your jack-knife and a number of little sticks to represent the logs
of your cabin; call an inch a foot or a half inch a foot as will suit your
convenience and measure all the sticks on this scale, using inches or
parts of inches for feet. Then sit down on the ground or on the floor and
experiment in building a toy house or miniature model until you make one
which is satisfactory. Next glue the little logs of the pen together; but
make the roof so that it may be taken off and put on like the lid to a
box; keep your model to use in place of an architect's drawing; the
backwoods workmen will understand it better than they will a set of plans
and sections on paper. Fig. 251 is a very simple plan and only put here as
a suggestion. You can put the kitchen at the back of the house instead of
on one side of it or make any changes which suit your fancy; the pen of
the house may be ten by twelve or twenty by thirty feet, a camp or a
dwelling; the main point is to finish your house up with totems as shown
by Fig. 253, and then tell the other fellows where you got the idea.

Fig. 250. Fig. 251. Fig. 252. Fig. 253. Fig. 254. Fig. 255.

[Illustration: A totem motif. An artistic and novel treatment for a log
house.]

Peeled Logs

For any structure which is intended to be permanent never use the logs
with bark on them; use _peeled_ logs. When your house is finished it may
look very fresh and new without bark, but one season of exposure to the
weather will tone it down so that it will be sufficiently rustic to please
your fancy, but if you leave the bark on the logs, a few seasons will rot
your house down, making it _too_ rustic to suit any one's fancy.

Lay up the pen of this house as already described and illustrated by Figs.
229, 233, etc., and when the sides and front walls have reached the
desired height, frame your roof after the manner shown by Fig. 49 or any
of the other methods described which may suit your fancy or convenience,
but in this case we use