HARDWOOD RECORD 



15 



The Building of the Barn 



BY ERNEST CROSBY 



I. 



There is a clamor of hammers striking nails into resounding 



wood, and of trowels clinking against stone, here where 



they are building the great stone barn. 

 It is the joyful noise of creation. 

 They are in haste to close it in, so that it may be launched in time 



to carry in its hold the ripening harvest of hay, and rye, 



and wheat, in another fortnight. 

 Though the carpenters are still at work within, and the masons 



finishing the east wall, yet the slaters have already half 



covered the long gable. 

 The roof-timbers stand out like the ribs of a ship, with keel 



turned skyward, destined, we hope, to sail down the 



years-to-come for a century or two, and to bear many an 



annual cargo of corn on its way from meadow to kitchen 



and manger. 

 IV ho knows but that under more brotherly skies it may become 



a communal barn, the centre of some better kind of great 



ranch-family. 

 The carpenters are flooring the main deck of the great farm-^ 



ship. 

 Half a dozen of them, on their knees, are driving long wire 



nails into the smooth white boards 

 Their left hands are full of nails, and they thrust them into the 



pockets of their apro'ns for more. 

 It takes four or five strokes of the hammer to send the nail home, 



and each series of strokes forms a little musical motif of 



itself in the rising scale, with a dull thud at the end hke i 



a hand muffling the chords of an intrument. 

 The hollow roof, partly open to the sky, reverberates every note. 

 Two men are planing and sawing boards to proper dimensions 



on a pair of wooden horses, and the overseer is balancing 



himself on the bare beams and measuring the spaces with 



a footrule. 



