HOUSE, PLANS, AND SPECIFICATIONS. 57 



and that four persons were killed and forty wound 

 ed. For a family of semi-angels this was doing well. 

 The philosophy of averages furnished one consola 

 tion, however Flushing had evidently concentrated 

 into one day its allowance of murders for the next 

 five years. 



None of Sille s men were in the fight, although at 

 first I anticipated finding my cellar a hospital, and 

 expected a renewed experience in the matter of lint 

 and bandages, such as occupied so much of our time 

 during the war. He kept on steadily adding boards, 

 and windows, and siding, and beams together, till 

 they took on the semblance of a house. To be sure, 

 it was rickety and open as yet: one man fell be 

 tween the timbers, another out of a window, and a 

 third from the roof but that did not hurt the house. 



Two Irishmen were one day at work digging a 

 well, and I commenced moralizing at their fate 

 doomed to a lower existence than hewers of wood 

 and drawers of water, not sufficiently intelligent, 

 even, to cut sticks, and condemned to carry wood 

 and dig for water ; their life one of weary, heart 

 rending, back-breaking toil; no time for pleasure, 

 no chance to cultivate the intellect and develop the 

 mind a miserable life, little better than death itself. 



Musing on their hard lot, I peered down into the 

 02 



