gossip
of weddings and courtships and quarrels. Even to-day we find it hard
to persuade those who are accustomed to the city to live in the
country. Even though their city home may be a dark tenement in the
slums, yet they enjoy being in a crowd of their fellow men. The
country seems lonesome.

LESSONS IN HOUSE BUILDING

This village and town life, like the work on the farm, was a new
school for the Hebrew shepherds, and set many an interesting problem
for them to solve. They had to learn to build and repair houses. They
were most often built of rough stones set in mud. The mud, when dry,
became fairly hard, but not like mortar or cement. It was always easy
for a thief "to dig through and steal," as Jesus so graphically
described. Even though no thief came the dried mud was always
crumbling, leaving holes between the stones through which snakes or
lizards could crawl. In such a house, if a man should lean against the
wall, it might easily happen that a serpent would bite him, as the
prophet Amos suggests.[3]

=Primitive Homes.=--The floor of the average poor man's house was
simply the hard ground. The flat roof was made of poles thatched with
straw or brushwood and covered over with mud or clay. There was seldom
more than one room. Often there were no windows; even in the palaces
of kings there were in those days no windows of glass. In one corner
of the room there was a fireplace where the family cooking was done.
There was no chimney, however, and the smoke had to go out through the
open door. The door itself was generally fastened to a post, the
lower end of which turned in a hollow socket in a heavy stone. When
the family went away from home the door was locked with a huge wooden
key, which was carried, not in the pocket, like our keys, but over the
shoulder. Such keys had this advantage, at any rate, over ours. You
could not very well lose them and you did not need a key ring.

=Houses of the well-to-do.=--Rich men's houses were, of course, more
substantially and comfortably built. Real mortar made of lime was used
in the walls. There were several rooms, including perhaps a cool
"summer house" on the roof, making a kind of second story. One climbed
up to these upper rooms by a ladder on the outside. The roof was
solidly built and surrounded by a railing, so that on a hot summer
evening the family could sit there and enjoy the cool evening breeze.
There were windows also, covered with wooden lattice work, wh