OR, HOW I BECAME A FLORIST. 87 



feet from the bottom of the pit, and fastened up in a temporary 

 manner, equidistant from the wall and the centre post, were 

 two pieces of timber of a very peculiar shape. A drawing 

 will best describe it. 



These were all the parts of the house completed, making 

 a sort of skeleton. While I was studying all this out, two 

 large teams drove up piled high with hot-bed sash, as the 

 farmers call them. They were plain sashes filled with glass 

 six feet long by three wide, looking like exaggerated sky- 

 lights. The workmen at once unloaded these and placed 

 them in heaps in our yard. This done, they took up one 

 sash, and, placing the bottom on the bevelled edge of the wall, 

 dropped the top into the slot or groove in the ridge-pole, as 

 you see in the drawing. Taking four screws they quickly 

 fastened it down top and bottom. Then they put another 

 on the opposite side so that the two sashes made an arch. 

 Leaving a space the width of a sash, they put up two more, 

 and then more, till half of all the sashes were in place. 

 This done, the temporary supports were taken away and the 

 building at once supported itself. Other men in the mean 

 while had been fastening curious iron hooks to the wall 

 opposite the spaces. They then took a sash, dropped the 

 bottom in the iron hooks, and slid the whole thing neatly into 

 place alongside the sash already in. In thirty minutes 



