defer building till you are a little richer.  Floors need the well-nailed linings, too, especially those of the upper stories, almost as much as the outer walls, and should be deafened with mortar if you can stand the cost; if not, with felt.  The upper floors we will talk over by and by.  Some people have a fancy for filling in between studs with soft brick, but I don’t believe in it.  It is seldom well done, it injures the frame, and costs more than back plastering, without being much if any better.  Rather build a brick house outright.  It is well, however, to lay a course or two of brick in mortar against each floor, filling the space between the inner base board and the outer covering entirely full and solid, leaving never the faintest hint of the beginning of a chance for mice.  Then when you hear the dear little creatures galloping over the ceiling, driving hickory-nuts before them and making noise enough for a whole battalion of wharf rats, there will be a melancholy satisfaction in knowing that you did your best to keep them out, and these brick courses will make the house warmer by preventing currents of air.

Here is one advantage in wood not easily obtained in brick or stone,—­the overhanging of the whole, or a part of the second story, which may be made picturesque in effect and will add much to the charm of the interior.  It may be simply an oriel window swinging forward to catch the sun or a distant view, an entire gable pushing the guest-chamber hospitably forth, or the whole upper story may extend beyond the lower walls, giving large chambers, abundant closets, and cosey window-seats.  Of course, such projections must be well sustained.  Let their support be apparent, in the shape of massive brackets or the actual timbers of the house.

Speaking of brackets, if we could learn to think of them, wherever they occur, simply as braces, we might have better success in their treatment.  Our abominable achievements in this line spring from an attempt to hide the use of the thing in its abstract beauty.  The straight three by four inch braces found under any barn-shed roof are positively more agreeable to look at than the majority of the distorted, turned, and becarved blocks of strange device that hang in gorgeous array upon thousands of “ornamental” houses.  Besides these there are a host of pet performances of builders and would-be architects that deserve only to be abolished and exterminated; put up, as they are, with an enormous waste of pine and painful toil of the flesh, to become a lasting weariness to the spirit.  Far more satisfying and truly ornamental is it, to let the essential structure of the building be its own interpreter.  Very much can be done by a skilful arrangement of the outer covering alone.  Don’t try to clothe the house with a smooth coat of boards laid horizontally with no visible joints or corner finish.  Such a covering is costly, defective, and contrary to first principles.  Clapboards are good.  Hardly anything is better, but don’t feel restricted to one mode.  I send you some sketches suggesting what may be done in this department by a careful design in the use of wide boards and narrow boards, clapboards and battens; boards horizontal, vertical, and cornerwise,—­any and all are legitimate, and it may be well to use them all on one building.