of hisn, and about as much more to the rafter, to go ahead of him; so all these long sarce gentlemen strive who can get the furdest in the sky, away from their farms.  In New England our maxim is a small house, and a most an everlastin almighty big barn; but these critters revarse it, they have little hovels for their cattle, about the bigness of a good sizeable bear trap, and a house for the humans as grand as Noah’s Ark.  Well, jist look at it and see what a figur it does cut.  An old hat stuffed into one pane of glass, and an old flannel petticoat, as yaller as jaundice, in another, finish off the front; an old pair of breeches, and the pad of a bran new cart saddle worn out, titivate the eend, while the backside is all closed up on account of the wind.  When it rains, if there aint a pretty how-do-you-do, it’s a pity—­beds toated out of this room, and tubs set in tother to catch soft water to wash; while the clapboards, loose at the eends, go clap, clap, clap, like galls a hacklin flax, and the winders and doors keen a dancin to the music.  The only dry place in the house is in the chimbley corner, where the folks all huddle up, as an old hen and her chickens do under a cart of a wet day.  I wish I had the matter of half a dozen pound of nails, (you’ll hear the old gentleman in the grand house say,) I’ll be darned, if I don’t, for if I had, I’d fix them are clapboards, I guess they’ll go for it some o’ these days.  I wish you had, his wife would say, for they do make a most particular unhansum clatter, that’s a fact; and so they let it be till the next tempestical time comes, and then they wish agin.  Now this grand house has only two rooms down stairs, that are altogether slicked up and finished off complete, the other is jist petitioned off rough like, one half great dark entries, and tother half places that look a plaguy sight more like packin boxes than rooms.  Well, all up stairs is a great onfarnished place, filled with every sort of good for nothin trumpery in natur—­barrels without eends—­corn cobs half husked—­cast off clothes and bits of old harness, sheep skins, hides, and wool, apples, one half rotten, and tother half squashed—­a thousand or two of shingles that have bust their withs, and broke loose all over the floor, hay rakes, forks and sickles, without handles or teeth; rusty scythes, and odds and eends without number.  When any thing is wanted, then there is a general overhaul of the whole cargo, and away they get shifted forrard, one by one, all handled over and chucked into a heap together till the lost one is found; and the next time, away they get pitched to the starn agin, higglety pigglety, heels over head, like sheep taken a split for it over a wall; only they increase in number each move, cause some on ’em are sure to get broke into more pieces than they was afore.  Whenever I see one of these grand houses, and a hat lookin out o’ the winder, with nary head in it, thinks I, I’ll be darned if that’s a place for a wooden clock, nothin short of a London touch would go down with them folks, so I calculate I wont alight.