rent heights, jutting forth in every
direction without any seeming plan, but looking as if they might have
crept together some cold winter's day for mutual warmth, or as if the
middle house was a bantam trying to shield an overgrown brood, a
solitary tower having the effect of a chicken on the mother hen's back.

It was in one of the rooms of this odd residence that our young hero,
Jem French, was born. His father, like his house, is decidedly odd. Mr.
Joseph French was a man of ideas, not a farmer as you might suppose from
his living in such a locality, but a Jack-at-all-trades, and in spite of
the proverb, good at _all_. Therein lays the secret of his queer-shaped
house. One of the little extensions is a tin shop where he mends the
pots and pans of the neighborhood, or creates any new vessels desired.
Another projection is devoted to carpenter work, and in a third addition
he makes boots and shoes for his own family and cobbles for others. In
the room above, with the big glass window, the rustic beaux and belles
sit like statuary, while he preserves their pictures in ambrotypes. Each
part of the building seems to be devoted to some specialty. But in one
part the door is always found to be locked and the window carefully
curtained, and even the children are forbidden to enter. In this room
Mr. French still spends hours and hours, sometimes days and weeks,
inventing, nobody knows what as yet.

Jem early bid fair to become another such man as his father, though
evidently that would not be to his pecuniary benefit, for the entire
surplus earnings of his parent had thus far been spent in obtaining
materials for further experimenting. Still Jem inherited the inventive
talent. He was envied and admired by schoolfellows and playmates. Not
even the richest among them could boast of owning such unique toys as
Jem was constantly making. The little stream that ran through the meadow
was spanned by miniature bridges of which he was sole architect. His
sailing craft, of all kinds, and fully rigged, swam in the placid
water. Dams were placed here and there, and sluice-ways conducted the
water to its work of turning sundry over-shot wheels which in their turn
operated little pumps or moved the machinery of a mill. He made his
sisters various mechanical figures which moved to the swinging of a
pendulum. Cardboard images were made to saw wood, fiddle, or dance for
hours together, the motive power being obtained from sand running
throu