Chapter 41

From John.

ETERNAL VIGILANCE.

MY DEAR ARCHITECT: You did well to send the key to your puzzles, else I might have frozen to death before finding out how to keep warm. But you've earned your discharge, which I forward herewith. Now I'm going to send you some grains of wisdom, gathered during my experience in building, which you may distribute at your discretion among your clients. When a man--I don't care if it's Solomon himself--undertakes to build a house, tell him from me, to wind up all other earthly affairs before beginning; wind them up so tight they'll run for a year or two without any of his help. Then turn over a new leaf,--learn to get through breakfast before seven A.M., in order to be on the ground every moment, from the time the first spadeful of dirt is thrown out till the last touch of paint is put on. You may make full-sized drawings for him of every stick and stone, write specifications by the yard, and draw up a contract that half a dozen lawyers can't expound, there'll still be a thousand little things that won't be done as he wants them.

The openings in the basement wall somehow get out of place, an inch or two too high or too low, or at one side, then the windows over them will look askew. The air-spaces in the wall will be filled up where they ought not to be, or left out where they ought to be filled; then the frost will go through one and the rats the other. If he uses colored mortar, it will be too dark or too light, or too something,--then he'll be obliged to paint the whole wall. The drains won't be put in the right place, or they'll pitch the wrong way; then he'll have to dig out new ones. The receivers for the stove-pipes will be forgotten or set in the ventilating-flues; then he might as well have no chimney. The masons will drop bricks and mortar and trowels down the flues; then he'll have to climb upon the roof with a brick tied to a rope and try to churn them out. Just at the place where the flues ought to be plastered outside and in, against the floor and roof timbers, the masons can't reach, and like as not they'll turn a brick up edgewise if a joist happens to crowd; then his house will burn up and never give him any more trouble.

The war with the masons is short and sharp; that with the carpenters long and tedious. There are ten thousand ways you don't want a thing done, only one that suits you. Setting partitions looks like easy work; I don't believe a house was ever built in which all of them and the doors through them were in just the right places. I know they 're not in mine. I'd give three times the cost of the door if one of them could be moved, two inches, and as much more if another could be made six inches wider. I tried to have one of the mantels set in the middle of one side of the room, but somehow it got fixed just enough away from the centre to look everlastingly awkward.

The rough work gets covered up pretty quickly, but it pays to keep watch and see that the spikes are put in where they belong; that the back plastering reaches quite up to the plate and down to the sill; that timbers are not left without visible means of support, or hung by "toe-nails" when they ought to be well framed and pinned. It's hard to make a carpenter believe that plastering cracks because his joists and furrings and studs won't hang together, but it's true a good many times. You like, also, to have something more than a good man's assurance, that the furnace pipes are "all right," and will sleep better on windy nights if you have seen all exposed corners guarded by a double lining.

The gas-man had his work to do over because some of the drop-lights were not in the centre of the ceilings.

I tremble to think of what might have been if I had left the painter to his own devices. It seems very clear to say you'll have the outside painted a sort of a kind of subdued gray, with trimmings a little darker, bordering on a brown; but unless you stand over the paint-tub with a loaded revolver, you'll get anything but what you expect. It may be a great deal better, but it won't be what you wanted. By the way, there's a great responsibility resting on the painters,--I don't mean the old masters, nor the young ones either, who seem to have forgotten that outside decoration was once considered quite worthy the tallest genius,--but the more modest artisans, who call themselves house and sign painters. Their broad brush often makes the beauty or the ugliness of a whole village. I'm ready for any suggestions on the subject. Hanging the doors is another point that needs watching. They'll be sure to open the wrong way. I've had three changed already, and I'll never hang another door with less than three butts, whatever its size. I suppose they always settle more or less. Why don't the workmen make allowance for it in fixing the catches? I tremble when I think of the painters, but I rejoice at my watchfulness when I reflect on the plumbing. The chances for leaking and freezing and bursting; the hidden pipes and secret crooks that were possible and only avoided by constant oversight! Now I can put my hand on every foot of pipe in the house, know where it goes to, what it's for, and that it won't burst or spring a leak with fair usage. I don't call it just the thing to drive a tenpenny nail square through a lead pipe, pull it out, and say nothing about it. You want to be on hand, too, when the trimmings are put on, and see that they are not too high or low, or fixed so you will bruise your knuckles every time you pull out the drawers or open the cupboard doors. Speaking of cupboards, there's no end to the bother if you don't just camp down in the pantry and stay there till the top shelf is up and the bottom drawer slides in its groove. In spite of our efforts, Mrs. John says there's no place for her tallest covered dish except the top shelf, which she can't reach without a step-ladder. You'll never know whether you are specially bright or the joiners extra stupid, but it's certain your way won't be their way, whichever is right. I say the man who pays his money should take his choice. But I haven't time to tell the whole story. It's the same thing from first to last. The only sure way of having a thing done well is to do it yourself; the next best is to tell some one else precisely how to do it and then watch them till it's done. The worst of these little blunders is, that they won't improve with age. They stare at you every time you see them, and they'll rise up before your great-great-grandchildren, monuments of your carelessness and ignorance.

I told you my house was half done when it was well begun; now that it is almost done it seems to me only fairly begun.

Yours, JOHN.