, were
employed on a substance no harder than the white pine of the adjacent mountains,
a wood so proverbially soft, that it is commonly chosen by the hunters for
pillows. But for this awkward dilemma, it is probable that the ambitious tastes
of our two architects would have left us much more to do in the way of
description. Driven from the faces of the house by the obduracy of the material,
they took refuge in the porch and on the roof. The former, it was decided,
should be severely classical, and the latter a rare specimen of the merits of
the composite order.
    A roof, Richard contended, was a part of the edifice that the ancients
always endeavoured to conceal, it being an excrescence in architecture that was
only to be tolerated on account of its usefulness. Besides, as he wittily added,
a chief merit in a dwelling was to present a front, on whichever side it might
happen to be seen; for as it was exposed to all eyes in all weathers, there
should be no weak flank, for envy or unneighbourly criticism to assail. It was,
therefore, decided, that the roof should be flat, and with four faces. To this
arrangement, Marmaduke objected the heavy snows that lay for months, frequently
covering the earth to a depth of three or four feet. Happily, the facilities of
the composite order presented themselves to effect a compromise, and the rafters
were lengthened, so as to give a descent that should carry off the frozen
element. But unluckily, some mistake was made in the admeasurement of these
material parts of the fabric, and as one of the greatest recommendations of
Hiram, was his ability to work by the square rule, no opportunity was found of
discovering the effect, until the massive timbers were raised, on the four walls
of the building. Then, indeed, it was soon seen, that, in defiance of all rule,
the roof was by far the most conspicuous part of the whole edifice. Richard and
his associate consoled themselves with the belief, that the covering would aid
in concealing this unnatural elevation; but every shingle that was laid only
multiplied objects to look at. Richard essayed to remedy the evil with paint,
and four different colours were laid on by his own hands. The first, was a
sky-blue, in the vain expectation that the eye might be cheated into the belief,
it was the heavens themselves that hung so imposingly over Marmaduke's dwelling:
the second was, what he called, a cloud-colour, being nothing more nor less than
an imitation of smoke