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