A MOUNTAIN-SIDE RAMBLE. 169 



edifices. Mr. Ruskin seems to hold that 

 a house falls short of its highest useful- 

 ness until it has become a ruin ; and who 

 knows but woodchucks may be of the same 

 opinion ? 



This particular house was in two parts, 

 one of them considerably more ancient than 

 the other. This older portion it was, of 

 which the floor had so badly (or so well) 

 fallen into decay ; while the ceiling, as if in 

 a spirit of emulation, had settled till it 

 described almost a semicircle of convexity. 

 To look at it, one felt as if the law of grav- 

 ity were actually being imposed upon. 



It must have marked an epoch in the his- 

 tory of the household, this doubling of its 

 quarters. Things were looking well with 

 the man. His crops were good, his family 

 increasing ; his wife had begun to find the 

 house uncomfortably small ; they could af- 

 ford to enlarge it. Hence this addition, this 

 " new part," as no doubt they were in the 

 habit of calling it, with pardonable satisfac- 

 tion. It was more substantially built than 

 the original dwelling, and possessed, what I 

 dare say its mistress had set her heart upon, 

 one plastered room. The " new part " 1 



