UNBUILDING A BUILDING 33 



ing wood, through the time when the splendid 

 pumpkin pines of the Maine forests were the 

 commonest and cheapest sources of lumber, to 

 our own, when even poor spruce and shaky hem- 

 lock are scarce and costly. In the same way you 

 note in these three stages of building three types 

 of nails. First is the crude nail hammered out 

 by the local blacksmith, varying in size and shape, 

 but always with a head formed by splitting the 

 nail at the top and tending the parts to the right 

 and left. These parts are sometimes quite long, 

 and clinch back into the board like the top of a 

 capital T. Then came a better nail of wrought 

 iron, culmsy but effective; and, later still, the 

 cut nail in sole use a generation ago. That mod- 

 ern abomination, the wire nail, appears only in 

 repairs. 



Thus the old house rose from four rooms to 

 eight, with several attics, and the singer and 

 lawyers pass off the scene, to be followed by the 

 Baptist deacon who later seceded and became a 

 Millerite, holding meetings of great fervor in the 

 front room, where one wall used to be covered 

 with figures which proved beyond a doubt that 

 the end of the world was at hand, and where 

 later he and his fellow believers appeared in their 



