246 PHASES OF FARM LIFE. 



( their enormous expansion of roof. It was a comfort 

 to look at them, they suggested such shelter and pro- 

 tection. The eaves were very low and the ridge-pole 

 v ^very high. Long rafters and short posts gave them 

 a quaint, short-waisted, grandmotherly look. They 

 were nearly square and stood very broad upon the 

 ground. Their form was doubtless suggested by the 

 damper climate of the Old World, where the grain 

 ^ and hay, instead of being packed in deep solid mows, 

 used to be spread upon poles and exposed to the cur- 

 rents of air under the roof. Surface and not cubic 

 \^ capacity is more important in these matters in Hol- 

 land than in this country. Our farmers have found 

 that in a climate where there is so much weather as 

 with us the less roof you have the better. Roofs will 



^ leak, and cured hay will keep sweet in a mow of any 

 depth and size in our dry atmosphere. 



The Dutch barn was the most picture'sque barn that 

 has been built, especially when thatched with straw, as 

 they nearly all were, and forming one side of an inclos- 

 ure of lower roofs or sheds also covered with straw, 

 beneath which the cattle took refuge from the winter 

 storms. Its immense, unpainted gable", cut with holes 



* / for the swallows, was like a section of a respectable 

 sized hill, and its roof like its slope^ Its great doors 

 always had a hood projecting over them, and the doors 

 themselves were divided horizontally into upper and 

 lower halves ; the upper halves very frequently being 



^ left open, through which you caught a glimpse of the 

 mows of hay or the twinkle of flails when the grain 

 was being threshed. 



