he big old cross-beam, trying to raise its
lower sky-line a couple of inches with a foot-adz. I had not supposed
that the job would be especially difficult. I did not realize that the
old white-oak beam in a century and a half had petrified. We were having
a pretty toilsome time with our shelves, but I never saw a man sweat and
carry on like Henry Jones. He had to work straight up, with his head
tipped back, and his neck was rather short, with no proper hinge in it.
Besides, it was August, and pretty still and intense, and then some bees
that had taken up residence between the floors did not like the noise
he made, and occasionally came down to see about it. At such times he
made what was in the nature of a spring for the door, explaining later
that he had been to sharpen his adz. During quieter moments I went over,
at his suggestion, to measure up and see if the beam wasn t high enough.
It was on the afternoon of the second day that I told him that if he
would now trim up and round off the corners a little I thought I might
be able to pass under it without butting my remaining brains out. You
never saw a man so relieved. I think he considered me over-particular
about a small matter. As a reward I set him to elevating the beam across
the top of the door leading to the kitchen--quite an easy job. He only
had to put in a few hours of patient overhead sawing and split out the
chunks with wedges and a maul.

Observing Henry Jones though fully, I became convinced that the oaken
frame of our house was nearly indestructible. When I found time I
examined its timbers rather carefully. They were massive as to size,
hand hewn, and held together with big wooden pins. No worm had been
indiscreet enough to tackle those timbers. The entire structure was
anchored in the masonry of the huge chimney, and as a whole was about as
solid as the foundations of the world. There were builders in those
days.

I have mentioned the "ancient mariner" who appeared in the dusk of the
evening to warn me against over-payment for the place--old Nat. It
turned out that he was a farmer, but with artistic leanings in the
direction of whitewash. He appeared one morning in a more substantial
form, and was presently making alabaster of our up-stairs ceilings, for
if ever there was an old master in whitewash it was Nat. Never a streak
or a patchy place, and he knew the secret of somehow making the second
coat gleam like frosting on a wedding-cake.

Things w