he entire
band of men and boys. Sometimes women pulled on the rope to express
their good will and helpfulness. Then the other sides were put up, and
the cross-beams, braces, and studding all pinned and nailed into place.
Afterwards the huge rafters were raised for the roof. Each man was
assigned in the beginning to his place and work, and worked faithfully
when his turn came. When the ridge-pole was put in place, the building
was christened, as it was called, by breaking over it a bottle of rum.
Often the house was literally given a name. Sitting astride the
ridge-pole, one poet sang:--

"Here's a mighty fine frame
Which desarves a good name,
Say what shall we call it?
The timbers all straight,
And was hewed fust rate,
The frame is well put together.
It is a good frame
That desarves a good name,
Say! what shall we name it?"

Another, a Rochester, New Hampshire, frame was celebrated in verse which
closed thus:--

"The Flower of the Plain is the name of this Frame,
We've had exceeding good Luck in raising the Same."

It was not luck that made these raisings a success, it was skill and
strength; skill and powers of endurance which could overcome and
surmount even the quantity of vile New England rum with which the
workmen were plied throughout the day. Accidents were frequent, and
often fatal. A great frame of a meeting-house, or a vast barn with forty
or fifty men at work on it, could not collapse without loss of life and
much injury of limb.

In the work of these raisings the highest as well as the humblest
citizens took part. Truly a man could glow with the warmth of home even
in a bare and scantily furnished house, at the thought that the walls
and rafters were held in place by the kind wishes and deeds of all his
friends and neighbors.

There is nothing in nature so unnatural, so singular in quality, as the
glittering artificiality of the early morning in the country the day
after a heavy, drifting, New England snowstorm. For a day and a night
the wildly whirling snow that "driving o'er the fields seems nowhere to
alight" has restrained the outlook, and every one has turned depressed
from that outside life of loneliness and gloom. The following morning
always opens with an excessively bright and dazzling sunshine which is
not like any other sunshine in any place or season, but is wholly
artificial, like the lime-light of a theatre. We always run eagerly to
the w