One day it was understood that a gentleman from the city had bought a villa site overlooking the town, and intended to build very soon.  I immediately wrote him a note, saying I would be glad to see his plans and make an estimate; and in the course of time the plans were sent me, and I am happy to say that I under-estimated every one, even my own old employer.

Then the gentleman—­Markson his name was—­drove out to see me, and he put me through a severe course of questions, until I wondered if he was not some distinguished architect.  But he wasn’t—­he was a shipping-merchant.  It’s certainly astonishing how smart some of those city fellows are about everything.

The upshot was, he gave me the contract, and a very pretty one it was:  ten thousand three hundred and forty dollars.  To be sure, he made me alter the specifications so that the sills should be of stuff ten inches square, instead of the thin stuff we usually use for the sills of balloon-frame houses, such as his was to be; and though the alteration would add quite a few dollars to the cost of materials, I did not dare to add a cent to my estimate, for fear of losing the contract.  Besides—­though, of course, I did not intend to do so dishonorable a thing—­I knew that I could easily make up the difference by using cheap paint instead of good English lead for priming, or in either one of a dozen other ways; builders have such tricks, just as ministers and manufacturers and railroadmen do.

I felt considerably stuck up at getting Markson’s house to build, and my friends said I had a perfect right to feel so, for no house so costly had been built at Bartley for several years.

So anxious were my friends that I should make a first-class job of it, that they all dropped in to discuss the plan with me, and to give me some advice, until—­thanks to their thoughtful kindness—­my head would have been in a muddle had the contemplated structure been a cheap barn instead of a costly villa.

But, by a careful review of the original plan every night after my friends departed, and a thoughtful study of it each morning before going to work, I succeeded in completing it according to the ideas of the only two persons really concerned—­I refer to Mr. Markson and myself.

Admitting in advance that there is in the house-building business very little that teaches a man to be a literary critic, I must nevertheless say that many poets of ancient and modern times might have found the building of a house a far more inspiring theme than some upon which they have written, and even a more respectable one than certain others which some distinguished rhymers have unfortunately selected.

I have always wondered why, after Mr. Longfellow wrote “The Building of a Ship,” some one did not exercise his muse upon a house.  I never attempted poetry myself, except upon my first baby, and even those verses I transcribed with my left hand, so they might not betray me to the editor of the Bartley Conservator, to whom I sent them, and by whom they were published.