SHELTER. 
31 
his head and shoulders, will sleep night after night on 
the snow —-- in a degree of cold which would ex¬ 
tinguish the life of one exposed to it in any woollen 
clothing.” He had seen them asleep thus. Yet he 
adds, “ They are not hardier than other people.” But, 
probably, man did not live long on the earth without dis¬ 
covering the convenience which there is in a house, the 
domestic comforts, which phrase may have originally 
signified the satisfactions of the house more than of the 
family; though these must be extremely partial and oc¬ 
casional in those climates where the house is associated 
in our thoughts with winter or the rainy season chiefly, 
and two thirds of the year, except for a parasol, is un¬ 
necessary. In our climate, in the summer, it was for¬ 
merly almost solely a covering at night. In the Indian 
gazettes a wigwam was the symbol of a day’s march, and 
a row of them cut or painted on the bark of a tree 
signified that so many times they had camped. Man 
was not made so large limbed and robust but that he 
must seek to narrow his world, and wall in a space such 
as fitted him. He was at first bare and out of doors; 
but though this was pleasant enough in serene and warm 
weather, by daylight, the rainy season and the winter, to 
say nothing of the torrid sun, would perhaps have 
nipped his race in the bud if he had not made haste 
to clothe himself with the shelter of a house. Adam and 
Eve, according to the fable, wore the bower before 
other clothes. Man wanted a home, a place of warmth, 
or comfort, first of physical warmth, then the warmth 
of the affections. 
We may imagine a time when, in the infancy of the 
human race, some enterprising mortal crept into a hol¬ 
low in a rock for shelter. Every child begins the world 
