we were to have them.  Faithful industry and attention we may demand, haste we have no right to ask.  But our men actually hurried.  We were instant in season and out of season, and can testify, with both hands in our empty pockets, that there was not an hour wasted.  Yet our full-blown hopes fell, as the roses fall, leaf by leaf; drop by drop our patience ebbed, till, ere the close of the week, we sank slowly down on a pile of black-walnut shavings in the calmness of despair.

To make a long story short, we gave up, beaten, trespassed a week on our long-suffering hostess, then went to visit our rich relations.  They were glad to see us when we came, and wondered how long we were going to stay.  We thought best to let them wonder, which they did for the space of a few weeks, when we folded our nightgowns and silently stole—­not the spoons, but ourselves—­away.

We mentioned the calmness of despair.  From that depth it is often but a single step to the serenity of faith, on which sublime height not the wreck of matter and the crush of worlds hath power to vex or make afraid, much less a few pine shavings and the want of a little paint.  Despair is never endless; it’s a short-lived emotion at the worst, a selfish one at the best.  Moralizing thus, it was by some means revealed to us that people are happy in paying twenty-five dollars a week at Martha’s Vineyard and Mount Desert for the blessed privilege of living in unfinished and unfurnished rooms,—­breathing plenty of fresh air, typhoid malaria thrown in,—­and eating such food as the uncertain winds and waves may waft thither.  If at Mount Desert why not at Rock Rimmon, especially as the cost is somewhat less, the fresh air equally abundant, with nothing more malarious than the pungent perfume of the pines, and all the products of the civilized world within easy reach?  Moreover, our third, fourth, and fifth stories—­the floor of the latter just above the ridge pole, its ceiling just beyond the stars—­were, for all purposes of use and comfort, ready for occupation.  So we entered, hung up our hats, and told the busy builders we had come to stay.

Which we have done; and now it’s the first of October.  The leaves are falling, the rooks are calling, the crickets are crawling, and the katydids are—­well, squalling.  There’s a work-bench bigger than Noah’s ark in the drawing-room, another in the library, next size larger, five tool-chests in as many different rooms, a thousand feet of lumber in the front hall, and nine hundred and thirty-seven different colored paint-pots in the guest-room,—­more or less.  We pry into cupboards and drawers with our finger-nails, we keep next the wall going up stairs, draw water through a straw, and to open doors we thrust a square stick through a round hole and twist and turn till the stick breaks or the door opens.  Generally the stick breaks.