Of late our injustice is greater and more disastrous; for we are destroying the very sources of supply without providing for the future, using wood in large quantities where other materials would be better and cheaper.  Yet we think ourselves very economical.  Once it was common to enclose wood buildings of all grades by walls at least ten or twelve inches thick, sometimes much more, and solid at that.  They were called log-houses.  Now it is the fashion to use two by four inch studs standing in rows at such distances that the whole substance of the frame in a single sheet would be about half an inch thick.  These are suggestively called balloon frames.  The former would be huge and inconvenient, the latter are often fair and frail.  That the frame of the outer wall of a wooden building should be mainly vertical is evident, the outer studs, if possible, extending from the sill to the plates, and as many of the inner ones as may be reaching through both stories, especially those by the staircase, where the shrinking of the second-floor timbers will reveal ugly cracks and crooks.  That the greatest strength and economy of material are secured by sawing logs into thin, wide scantling is also beyond question, but don’t try to save too closely on a bill of timber.  A thousand feet added to the width of the studs and the depth of the joist will make the difference between a stiff, unterrified frame, and a weak, trembling one.  Neither be sparing of the number of these light sticks.  Sixteen inches between centres is far enough for studs or joists; twelve is better, though particulars will depend on circumstances.  We have no use for the old-fashioned huge square posts, horizontal girts, and braces midway the walls of a two-story building, having found that studs two inches by five will carry all that is required of them as well as if ten times as large.  Let us generously give the light frame the stanch support of a sound, well-matched, and bountifully nailed covering of inch boards.  There’s great virtue in tenpenny nails.  Let the building be well peppered with them.  Even after boarding, your walls will have less than two inches of solid wood.  If you wish to make an example of yourself, lay this boarding diagonally; and, to cap the climax of scientific thoroughness, having given it a good nailing and a layer of sheathing-felt, cover the whole with another wooden garment of the same style as the first, and crossing it at right angles.  All of this before the final overcoat of clapboards, or whatever it may be.  A house built in this way would laugh at earthquakes and tornadoes.  It couldn’t fall down, but would blow over and roll down hill without doing any damage except disarranging the furniture, and, possibly, shaking off the chimney-tops!  It would hardly need any studs except as furrings for lath and plastering, and would be very warm.  You know my mind about floors.  If you can’t afford joists stiff enough to hold you without jarring, even when you chance to cut a caper with the baby,