Page:Pioneersorsource01cooprich.djvu/54

 play of their talents on a stone edifice, excepting in the roof and in the porch. The former, it was soon decided, should be made with four faces and a platform, in order to hide a part of the building that all writers agreed was an object that ought to be concealed. To this arrangement, Marmaduke objected the heavy snows that lay for months, frequently covering the earth to a depth of three or four feet. Happily, the facilities of the composite order presented themselves to effect a compromise, and the rafters were lengthened, so as to give a descent that should carry off the frozen element. But unluckily, some mistake was made in the admeasurement of these material parts of the fabric, and as one of the greatest recommendations of Hiram, was his ability to work by the "square rule," no opportunity was found of discovering the effect that was to be produced by this offspring of compound genius, until the massive timbers were raised, with much labour, on the four walls of the building. Then, indeed, it was soon seen, that, in defiance of all rule, the roof was by far the most conspicuous part of the edifice. Richard and his associate consoled themselves with the belief, that the covering would aid in concealing this unnatural elevation; but every shingle that was laid, was only multiplying objects to look at. Richard essayed to remedy the evil with paint, and four different colours were laid on by his own hands. The first was a sky-blue, in the vain expectation that the eye might be cheated into the belief, it was the heavens themselves that hung so imposingly over Marmaduke's dwelling; the second was, what he called, a "cloud-colour," being nothing more nor less than an imitation of light smoke; the third was what Richard termed an invisible green, which he laid on with a belief, that the deformity might be blended,