All this is too late for you, but you may pass it along to Fred, the schoolmaster, Miss Jane, and any other friends or neighbors who may be in an inquiring mood.  Tell them, too, there is no safety, even with the utmost vigilance, unless every workman carries with him that old-fashioned instrument, a conscience.  Give me credit here for great self-control.  This is the place for some preaching of the most powerful kind, but I refrain, knowing you are too much engrossed with the finishing of your house to heed it.  Do you remember how it is recorded in terse Scripture phrase that “Solomon builded a house and finished it”?  Evidently the finishing was then quite as important and onerous a matter as the building.  I think it is a great deal more so.  The carpenters and masons, to whom you pay a certain sum of money, build it.  Before they come and after they go you exercise upon it your noblest, manliest faculties.  Yet it will never be done.  The walls may not grow any larger or the roof any higher, but every year will add some new charm, some new grace and harmony without and within.  More and more the ground around it, the trees, the walks, and the grateful soil will assimilate themselves to its spirit.  More and more each article of furniture will grow to be an essential part of the home, dear for its comfort, and beautiful in its fitness and simplicity.  More and more you will learn the worthlessness of boastful fashion, and the exceeding loveliness of truth.

LETTER XLIII.

From John.

FINAL AND PERSONAL.

MY DEAR ARCHITECT:  We’ve moved in.  The house wasn’t done but the plastering was dry, and the paint too, what there is of it, and enough rooms were finished to hold us comfortably.  Mrs. John thought we should somehow feel better acquainted if we took possession while things were in a chaotic state, before the house had a chance to put on airs, and make us feel like intruders; that it would fit us better if it wasn’t entirely hardened before we crawled into it.  I told her ’t would be a great deal easier to wait till everything was cleared up and we could take a fresh start, but she couldn’t see it in that light.  Said she’d known lots of folks to be completely overpowered by a new house, and she proposed to take it while it was sort of helpless, and would be under obligation to her.  It’s better, too, according to her notions, to get familiar with the rooms before furnishing them, and—­I’ve forgotten what other reasons, all good enough but not exactly correct, as I’ve since found out.  I’d noticed some unusual and rather suggestive performances of late, but wasn’t quite prepared for a request to rent the old house the very day we moved.  Matters seemed to culminate one night after the schoolmaster had received your sketches and estimates for his brick beginnings.  I can’t say as to their merits architecturally, but they cleared one of the rough places in a certain course that never runs quite smooth.