were about to
begin cutting their corn. Westbury came, but at the end of the first
day, when one of the up-stairs rooms was about finished, he also
developed a violent interest in corn-cutting. I was thus abandoned to
fate, also quite deserted. My carpenters were cutting corn; Luther
Merrill, my handsome plowman, was cutting corn; Old Pop and Sam were
cutting corn; while Elizabeth had gone to the apartment in town to begin
preparations for moving, and to put the Pride and the Hope into school.
I was alone--alone with sixteen dollars' worth of paper, a big, flat
paste-brush, and my bare, bare walls.

Meantime I had trimmed some of the strips for Westbury and had given
some slight attention to his artistic method. It looked rather easy, and
there was still half a pail of paste. In some things I am impulsive,
even daring. With a steady hand, I measured, cut off, and trimmed a
strip of the pretty chintzy paper, laid it face down on the
papering-board which Westbury had made, slapped on the paste with a free
and business-like dash, folded up the end just as Westbury did, picked
it up with an easy, professional swing, and started for the wall.

[Illustration]

Being a tall man, I did not need the step-ladder. In those low rooms I
could quite easily stand on the floor and paper from the ceiling down.
Certainly that was an advantage. I discovered, however, that a
step-ladder is not all of a paper-hanger's gifts. When I matched that
piece of paper at the ceiling and started down with it, I realized
presently that it was not going in the direction of the floor. At least
not directly. It was slanting off at a bias to the southeast, leaving a
long, lean, wedge-shaped gap between it and the last strip. I pulled it
off and started again, shifting the angle. But I overdid the thing. This
time it went biasing off in the other direction and left an untidy
smudge of paste on Westbury's nice, clean strip. I reflected that this
would probably dry out--if not, I would hang a picture over it. Then I
gave the strip I was hanging a little twitch, being a trifle annoyed,
perhaps, by this time, and was pained to see that an irregular patch of
it remained on the wall, while the rest of it fell sloppily into my
hands. It appeared that wall-paper became tender with damp paste on it
and should not be jerked about in that nervous way. In seeking to remove
the ragged piece from the plaster, holding up the mutilated strip
meanwhile, something else o