and noticed with glee the blue curling smoke from
its villages on the southern Solway shores.

There, amid this wholesome and breezy village life, our dear parents
found their home for the long period of forty years. There too were born
to them eight additional children, making in all a family of five sons
and six daughters. Theirs was the first of the thatched cottages on the
left, past the "miller's house," going up the "village gate," with a
small garden in front of it, and a large garden across the road; and it
is one of the few still lingering to show to a new generation what the
homes of their fathers were. The architect who planned that cottage had
no ideas of art, but a fine eye for durability! It consists at present
of three, but originally of four, pairs of "oak couples" (Scottice
_kipples_) planted like solid trees in the ground at equal intervals,
and gently sloped inwards till they meet or are "coupled" at the ridge,
this coupling being managed not by rusty iron, but by great solid pins
of oak. A roof of oaken wattles was laid across these, till within
eleven or twelve feet of the ground, and from the ground upwards a stone
wall was raised, as perpendicular as was found practicable, towards
these overhang-wattles, this wall being roughly "pointed" with sand and
clay and lime. Now into and upon the roof was woven and intertwisted a
covering of thatch, that defied all winds and weathers, and that made
the cottage marvelously cozy,--being renewed year by year, and never
allowed to remain in disrepair at any season. But the beauty of the
construction was and is its durability, or rather the permanence of its
oaken ribs! There they stand, after probably not less than four
centuries, japanned with "peat reek" till they are literally shining, so
hard that no ordinary nail can be driven into them, and perfectly
capable of service for four centuries more on the same conditions. The
walls are quite modern, having all been rebuilt in my father's time,
except only the few great foundation boulders, piled around the oaken
couples; and parts of the roofing also may plead guilty to having found
its way thither only in recent days; but the architect's one idea
survives, baffling time and change--the ribs and rafters of oak.

Our home consisted of a "but" and a "ben" and a "mid room," or chamber,
called the "closet." The one end was my mother's domain, and served all
the purposes of dining-room and kitchen and parlor, besid