there by hands that have been dust these fifty years, you poise
and swing a forty-pound crowbar with a strong uplift against the
roof-board, near where one of the old-time hand-made, hammer-pointed,
wrought-iron nails enters the oak timber. The board lifts
an inch and snaps back into place. You hear a handful of the
time-and-weatherworn shingles jump and go sputtering down the roof.
You hear a stealthy rustling and scurrying all about you. Numerous
tenants who pay no rent have heard eviction notice, for the house
in which no men live is the abode of many races. Another blow near
another nail, and more shingles jump and flee, and this time a
clammy hand slaps your face. It is only the wing of a bat,
fluttering in dismay from his crevice. Blow after blow you drive
upon this board from beneath, till all the nails are loose, its
shingle-fetters outside snap, and with a surge it rises, to fall
grating down the roof, and land with a crash on the grass by the
old door-stone.

The morning sun shines in at the opening, setting golden motes
dancing, and caressing rafters that have not felt its touch for a
hundred and fifty years, and you feel a little sob of sorrow swell
in your heart, for the old house is dead, beyond hope of
resurrection. With your crowbar you have knocked it in the head.

Other boards follow more easily, for now you may use a rafter for
the fulcrum of your iron lever and pry where the long nails grip
the oak too tenaciously, and it is not long before you have the
roof unboarded. And here you may have a surprise and be taught a
lesson in wariness which you will need if you would survive your
unbuilding. The bare rafters, solid oak, six inches square, hewn
from the tree, as adze-marks prove, are halved together at the top
and pinned with an oak pin. At the lower end, where they stand
upon the plates, they are not fastened, but rest simply on a
V-shaped cut, and when the last board is off they tumble over like a
row of ninepins and you may be bowled out with them if you are not
clever enough to foresee this.

As with the roof-boards, so with the floors and walls. Blows with
the great bar, or its patient use as a lever, separate part from
part, board from joist, and joist from timber, and do the work,
and you learn much of the wisdom and foolishness of the old-time
builder as you go on. Here he dovetailed and pinned the framework
so firmly and cleverly that nothing but human patience and
ingenuity could ever