ding is especially subject,--a difficulty familiar to
all who have tried it, but which people cannot always get out of by
jumping squarely into it as we have done.

There are various reasons for it. A superficial view of building is
one. The masons are scarcely noticed before the foundation-walls are
laid; the walls shoot up in a single day; the roof spreads its saving
shelter as easily as though it were a huge umbrella; the windows open
their eyes in new-born wonder; the chimneys breathe the blue breath
of home life out into the world; the painter touches the clapboards
with his magic wand; and, with one accord, all men cry out, and
especially all women, "Wal, I do declare! That air house goes up in a
hurry, don't it? Guess there hain't much but green lumber gone into
that. Folks'll be movin' in 'n a few days. Ketch me goin' into a house
like that! I'd a good deal druther live in an old house than die in a
new one."

But, for some reason, the folks don't move in. Week after week passes
without visible change till we hear no more of haste, but owner and
neighbors grow impatient, and can't for their lives see why that house
wa'n't done weeks and weeks ago! In point of fact, when it appeared
almost wholly built, it was hardly begun. The work thus far had been
of the sort that can be quickly executed, much of it done by
machinery. Even after the plastering is dry, the floors laid, the
windows in, and perhaps the greater part of the interior woodwork in
place, the actual labor of finishing is but fairly begun.

Changes always cause delay more or less serious. Whoever makes
alterations in his house builds four houses. There is the first doing
it, which is one; then there is the "cussing and discussing," the
hesitating and final deciding to make the change, equivalent, at least
in time and nervous wear and tear, to the original work, which is two;
the undoing is three; and the final adjusting it to your mind is four.
Woe to him by whom the change cometh, but come it will. It can be
wholly avoided only by having things done as you do not want them and
will never be satisfied to leave them. Of course, the want of plans is
a fruitful source of alterations. We are too modest and too sensible
to say all plans should be drawn by an architect, but carefully
prepared they must be, and, what is commonly more difficult,
thoroughly understood by the party most interested, that is, the
owner.

Another reason why the lengthened sweet