Page:Pioneersorsource01cooprich.djvu/131

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THE PIONEERS.
117

of experiment. The frame fitted well; and the skeleton of the fabric was reared without a single accident, if we except a few falls from horses, while the labourers were returning home in the dusk of the evening. From this time, the work advanced with great rapidity, and in the course of the season, the labour was completed; the edifice standing, in all its beauty and proportions, the boast of the village, the study of the young aspirants for architectural fame, and the admiration of every settler on the Patent.

It was a long, narrow house, of wood, painted white, and more than half windows; and when the observer stood at the western side of the building, the edifice offered but a small obstacle to a full view of the rising sun. It was, in truth, but a very comfortless, open place, through which the daylight shone with prodigious facility. On its front were divers ornaments, in wood, designed by Richard, and executed by Hiram; but a window in the centre of the second story, immediately over the door, or grand entrance, and the "steeple," were the pride of the building. The former was, we believe, of the composite order, for it included in its composition a multitude of ornaments, and a great variety in figure. It consisted of an arched compartment in the centre, with a square, and smaller division on either side, the whole encased in heavy frames, deeply and laboriously moulded in pine wood, and lighted with a vast number of blurred and green-looking glass, of those dimensions which are commonly called "eight by ten." Blinds, that were intended to be pointed green, kept the window in a state of preservation, and probably might have contributed to the effect of the whole, had not the failure in the public funds, which seems always to be incidental to any undertaking of this kind, left them