[Illustration:  Outer finish of wood.]

Many points relating to the use of wood and appertaining equally to buildings whose walls are of brick or stone, we may find farther on.  In closing, let me adjure you by all your hope of a comfortable, safe, and satisfying house,—­by all the common-sense in your possession and all the capital at your command,—­resolve that you will never—­no, never—­build your house of unseasoned timber.

LETTER XX.

From John.

A surrender and change of base.

My dear architect:  It was very well for Noah and the other antediluvians, who had any little building to do, to wait for their timber to season.  When a man has a thousand years or so to live, he can afford to take things easy.  It’s different in this great and glorious nineteenth century, when the chief aim is to make the shortest time on record.  You know our Western farmers have a brisk way of going out into their thousand-acre wheatfields before breakfast, reaping, threshing, and grinding the grain, which their thrifty wives make into biscuit for the morning meal; and you’ve heard of the young man who caught a sheep in the morning, sheared it, carded, spun, and wove the wool, cut the cloth and made the coat to wear at his own wedding in the evening.  Young America don’t understand why a pine or an oak tree can’t be put over the course, like a sheep or an acre of grain.  Besides, you talk like an old fogy.  When a man says he has decided to build a house, he means he is ready to begin,—­right off; and if our lumber-dealers won’t keep dry stuff (which of course they won’t unless obliged to), then he must use green.

I’m surprised you don’t admire the fanciful brackets and other wooden straddle-bugs people are so fond of decorating their houses with.  By the way, if these brackets are purely ornamental, there ought not to be two alike, any more than you’d have two busts or two pictures alike in one room.  Suppose you collect an assortment of the rich and rarest specimens, and hang them, like Lord Dundreary’s shirts, “all in a wo,” on somebody’s villa.  Wouldn’t they be lovely?  I’d like to pursue the subject, but have other fish to fry.

Mrs. John is right, as usual; our house will be a stone one, and will not be built until next year.  Meantime, the timber will have a chance to season, and we shall have time to study up our plan and sort of get the hang of it.

Now I want you to transfer your interest to another case.  Who should drop down upon us, last week, but our old friend Fred?  Been out West for the last dozen years or more; enterprising and prosperous, you’ll be glad to hear.  Come home to stay, bringing a wife who is sure to make Mrs. John jealous, a triplet of boys (the oldest half as big as his dad), and plenty of stamps.  He has bought the Captain