32 OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS 



Two new rooms were added to the ground-floor- 

 back by the simple expedient of tacking long 

 spruce rafters to the roof, making a second roof 

 over the old one, leaving the old roof with boards 

 and shingles still on it. Thus there grew a roof 

 above a roof, a shapeless void of a dark attic, 

 and below, the two rooms. 



The use of the spruce rafters and hemlock 

 boarding marks a period in building little more 

 than a half-century gone. About this time the 

 house acquired a joint owner, for a local lawyer 

 of considerable importance joined his fortunes 

 and his house to it, bringing both with him. 

 This section, two more rooms and an attic, was 

 moved in from another part of the town and at- 

 tached very gingerly, by one corner, to one cor- 

 ner. It was as if the lawyer had had doubts as 

 to how the two houses might like each other, and 

 had arranged things so that the bond might be 

 broken with as small a fracture as possible. This 

 "new" part may well have been a hundred years 

 old at the time, for, whereas the original house 

 was boarded with oak on oak, this was boarded 

 with splendid clear pine on oak, marking the 

 transition from the pioneer days when all the tim- 

 ber for a house was obtained from the neighbor- 



