MANY of our readers are no doubt familiar with the old-fashioned house built by our forefathers - the log cabin. Our engraver has succeeded very well in producing a good illustration, one with its primitive surroundings. Who shall say that its walls of rough logs, and its roof made of rough puncheons held in place by poles, did not shelter the best blood of our nation? And who shall fail to revere the memory of those who toiled in and reclaimed the wilderness from its wildness, endured privations, poverty, and misfortune, triumphed over obstacles almost insurmountable, and made it possible for us to possess Our Homes and Their Adornments?

No architect had they to plan parlor, library, and conservatory, no mills had they to cut, plane, match, and fashion the lumber; but with ax and rude saw they hewed from the tree each piece, patiently but perseveringly until the house was finished, - not in soft wood or hard wood, not in molded base or graceful architrave, but finished for such comforts as they needed.

And the Mothers - all glory to their memory! - their fingers were busy in interior decoration - not in making applique work, not in painting plaques and panels, but in providing such comforts as could be obtained. They took as much pleasure and exhibited as much pride in their graceful festoons of red-pepper pods and dried pumpkins, as does the modern woman in her richly ornamented portion or lambrequin.

Fig. 2.

Comfort never waited to be invited into such a house; she entered and took up her abode there. Little use for ventilating apparatus - the high piled open fire-place, roaring and crackling, asserted its ability to assume all care of the frequent change of air in the room, and as for inlets for air, there were plenty of them.

The plans and specifications of such a house would probably call for "solid walls of native timber carefully grooved and fitted at each corner so that no crack between timbers should exceed six inches; the walls at the ends carried up so as to give the roof the proper pitch; the rafters to be of poles, laid from end to end; the roof to be of slabs, lapped and the joints broken; the whole to be held in place by good solid poles, well 'scotched' and tied down at the ends; the floor to be made of well-smoothed slabs, laid close and in a workman-like manner; the walls to be plastered with good, tough red clay, carefully put on with the hands; the whole building to be completed and ready for occupancy before the approach of cold weather."

Each man was his own architect, contractor, builder, and finisher; yet the old log-house did not long content its occupants, for after the "clearin' " was made and the fields well under cultivation, the hewed log-house was built, and perhaps after a few years a double hewed log-house was put up, with well-fitted logs, and cracks filled, not with red clay, but pure white, lime, burned from stone taken from the quarry on the premises.

Thus the desire for better houses, and the ability to possess them has grown, till by genius, industry, and frugality, any family may possess their own home and adorn it in a manner suited to their taste and means. To all such, the several departments of this work are worth perusal.