BUILDING THE HOUSE. 
49 
the carting, transferred the still tolerable, straight, and 
drivable nails, staples, and spikes to his pocket, and then 
stood when I came back to pass the time of day, and 
look freshly up, unconcerned, with spring thoughts, at 
the devastation; there being a dearth of work, as he 
said. He was there to represent spectatordom, and 
help make this seemingly insignificant event one with 
the removal of the gods of Troy. 
I dug my cellar in the side of a hill sloping to the 
south, where a woodchuck had formerly dug his burrow, 
down through sumach and blackberry roots, and the 
lowest stain of vegetation, six feet square by seven 
deep, to a fine sand where potatoes would not freeze in 
any winter. The sides were left shelving, and not 
stoned; but the sun having never shone on them, the 
sand still keeps its place. It was but two hours’ work. 
I took particular pleasure in this breaking of ground, 
for in almost all latitudes men dig into the earth for an 
equable temperature. Under the most splendid house 
in the city is still to be found the cellar where they store 
their roots as of old, and long after the superstructure 
has disappeared posterity remark its dent in the earth. 
The house is still but a sort of porch at the entrance of 
a burrow. 
At length, in the beginning of May, with the help 
of some of my acquaintances, rather to improve so 
good an occasion for neighborliness than from any 
necessity, I set up the frame of my house. No man 
was ever more honored in the character of his raisers 
than I. They are destined, I trust, to assist at the rais¬ 
ing of loftier structures one day. I began to occupy 
my house on the 4th of July, as soon as it was boarded 
and roofed, for the boards were carefully feather-edged 
4 
