But we are no longer desperate.  The sound of the builder’s axe and hammer mingles harmoniously with the rattling of dishes and the drumming of the piano.  A profound peace possesses our souls, for Nature’s own infinite glory is around us, and we go from our castle in Spain to our cottage by the sea, from our house of active industry to our restful home in the New Jerusalem, with the opening and the closing of a door.  We are not anxious or impatient, being well assured that steadfast industry will finally conquer and our house be finished as far as mortal house should be.  Which leads us to remark just here, that a man ought never to think his house is quite complete; he will not, if he is wise, and grows as long as he lives.  Our present point is the inevitable delay in the outward finishing to which home building is especially subject,—­a difficulty familiar to all who have tried it, but which people cannot always get out of by jumping squarely into it as we have done.

There are various reasons for it.  A superficial view of building is one.  The masons are scarcely noticed before the foundation-walls are laid; the walls shoot up in a single day; the roof spreads its saving shelter as easily as though it were a huge umbrella; the windows open their eyes in new-born wonder; the chimneys breathe the blue breath of home life out into the world; the painter touches the clapboards with his magic wand; and, with one accord, all men cry out, and especially all women, “Wal, I do declare!  That air house goes up in a hurry, don’t it?  Guess there hain’t much but green lumber gone into that.  Folks’ll be movin’ in ‘n a few days.  Ketch me goin’ into a house like that!  I’d a good deal druther live in an old house than die in a new one.”

But, for some reason, the folks don’t move in.  Week after week passes without visible change till we hear no more of haste, but owner and neighbors grow impatient, and can’t for their lives see why that house wa’n’t done weeks and weeks ago!  In point of fact, when it appeared almost wholly built, it was hardly begun.  The work thus far had been of the sort that can be quickly executed, much of it done by machinery.  Even after the plastering is dry, the floors laid, the windows in, and perhaps the greater part of the interior woodwork in place, the actual labor of finishing is but fairly begun.

Changes always cause delay more or less serious.  Whoever makes alterations in his house builds four houses.  There is the first doing it, which is one; then there is the “cussing and discussing,” the hesitating and final deciding to make the change, equivalent, at least in time and nervous wear and tear, to the original work, which is two; the undoing is three; and the final adjusting it to your mind is four.  Woe to him by whom the change cometh, but come it will.  It can be wholly avoided only by having things done as you do not want them and will never be satisfied to leave them.  Of course, the want of plans is a fruitful source of alterations.  We are too modest and too sensible to say all plans should be drawn by an architect, but carefully prepared they must be, and, what is commonly more difficult, thoroughly understood by the party most interested, that is, the owner.