LIPPINCOTT'S MAGAZINE. JUNE, 1883. THE VAGARIES OF WESTERN ARCHITECTURE. A MUDDY stream, navigable only in all its bearings. To him there is as it has been dredged from year to year, a large fresh-water lake into which the stream empties after cutting its channel through bluffs of blue marly clay, a frontage of seven miles along the lake and a depth of from four to six miles toward the interior, a chequerboard of village streets covering this area, such is the topography of Joinwater, a fair specimen of a Western American city: ex uno disce omnes. The founders of this busy metropolis promised themselves no result so magnificent or so far-reaching as the present when they entered the unbroken forest nearly a century ago. To be sure, they dignified the object of their hopes with the title of "city;" but that was before the lack of buyers had more than once scaled down the prices of cornerlots, and before the dissatisfied settler had been tracked to the woods and compelled to return. Such experiences convinced the founders that their little hamlet, like confidence, must be a plant. of slow growth. And even when municipal honors came, in 1836, this was no fulfilment of the Hon. Gideon Granger's prophecy of 1805,-that "an extensive city" would soon cover the ground. By the retrospective observer, however, the result is readily comprehended nothing strange in the decennial doubling of the population since the advent of the "three persons" in 1796; and if he is a citizen of Joinwater he will point with pride to these cold facts of the census-table:-1800, 18; 1810, 57; 1820, 350; 1830, 1,075; 1840, 6,071; 1850, 17,034; 1860, 43,417; 1870, 93,018; 1880, 160,146,-Joinwater thus being outranked to-day by only ten other cities of North America. The citizen will contrast the religious and moral tone of the community with the time when a circuit-rider declared that he could make no headway among the guzzlers, smokers, and Sabbath-breakers, "so terrific was the profanity." He will discourse freely upon the modest beginnings of a school system that took the first premium" at the Centennial;" and, finally, he will invite you to drive along the Galilean Way,-or Euchre Avenue, "which Bayard Taylor describes as the finest street in the world." When the early surveyors came hither from Connecticut, they refused to be shackled by the old-time notions regarding town lines and turnpikes. The township, five miles square, took the place of the town, and its boundaries were surveyed and marked by highways on the cardinal points of the compass. Other intermediate highways, also at Copyright, 1883, by J. B. LIPPINCOTT & Co. VOL. V. N. S.-36 529 a spider round and round his airy castle. right angles, crossed at the "centre" of each township, and gave direct access to the "centres" of the other townships. To a city-born and city-bred man the The traveller from New England, there- visit to Joinwater causes sensations both fore, will no longer find his Hanover agreeable and peculiar. In place of a Centre flanked all about with East, mere front, seventeen to twenty feet West, North, and South Hanover. In- wide, with "three stories and basement,” stead of this arrangement, he will dis-showing the "high stoop" of New cover that Mantua is the central and York, the "swell" of Boston, or the only settlement in the township of that more sober façade of Philadelphia, he name, and that in order to reach it he sees dwellings wholly detached each must follow a zigzag course while roam- from the other, and so placed upon large ing over the hills and diving into the lots that the reputation of the architect valleys that came within range of the depends quite as much upon his side theodolite. In spite of these and many elevations as it does upon his front. other physical differences, the rural New | The latitude thus allowed to the archiEngland, transplanted to this Western tect,-who for many years was none horizon, shows the clear grit and the in- other than the builder,-and the restless fluence of the Puritans even more than spirit of the Western business-man, which some of the elder communities along looks upon a thirty-year-old house as Massachusetts Bay. old-fashioned and only fit to be "remodelled" or to be destroyed, will account for the infinite variety of dwellings that may be seen in Joinwater to-day. As the visitor observes that scarcely two of them are alike, he must recall the standard of building that Vitruvius offered to the Emperor Augustus, while he declares that, with rare exceptions, the evil genii of constructive and decorative art have been let loose, and that their vagaries, carved in wood or stone, cast in iron, or moulded in brick, still survive the fury of the elements. His inquiry, adapted from Ruskin, will be, "In one hundred years of building, what has [not] been done?" The answer to this must be traced from decade to decade. The original plot of Joinwater showed generous squares bounded by broad streets running so far to the north of east and to the west of north that no houses could be laid out in the orthodox way, four-square with the compass, the door opening to the east, if possible. For more than forty years the Crooked River on the west and Cat Street on the east were the extreme limits of the village, which was bounded on the north by Cat Lake and on the south by the wilderness. The main streets within this half-mile square were Broad (one hundred and twenty feet wide), Court, and Federal. A "public. square" of ten acres marked the intersection of Broad and Court. The "southern highway" led to Fort Duquesne, in a neighboring State. The "central highway" pointed toward the city of Bisons, after having joined an extension of Federal Street within the limits of a township named Galileo, after the early surveyors. Hence the "central highway" became in turn the "Galilean Way," "Euchre Street," or "Euchre Avenue," while its great rival one square to the southward always went by the less high-sounding title of Outlook Street." Still other avenues were laid out, each radiating from the Public Square as a central point, and the cross-streets marking the circuit of THE FIRST DECADE [1790-1800].A convenient size for the log shanties was eighteen feet by twenty-four. The ends of the logs were "half checked," so that the "chinks" of mud between them might be as small as possible. The frame and fastenings of the roof were known as "trappings," "trap-logs," "weight-poles," and "knees,"-the main area of the space being covered with "shakes" that had been split from red oak with a "frow." The cabin was put together by a "raising," to which the neighbors contributed their oxen, their muscles, and their ap preciation of "corn-juice." While the raising was in progress, the ladies of the settlement indulged in a "quilting," after which all hands enjoyed a dance, the lack of a violin being supplied by the vocal organs of one of the dancers. Five yards of calico, costing one dollar, made a dress that was elegant enough for the most select ball. The exterior of the cabin was completed by a chimney of mud secured with crossed sticks. Access to the interior was had through an opening that had been cut in one of the sides, the bits of log thus removed being made to serve as steps. A blanket served as a door, unless the ambitious proprietor wrought with an axe a more formidable barrier and hung it upon wooden hinges. In the latter case a wooden latch upon the inner side could be lifted from the outside only when a bit of string or leather had been passed through an augerhole above. To pull the latchstring in was a trait of caution, and, sometimes, of meanness; while true hospitality was found, as General Harrison said of his own log cabin, "where the latch-string always hangs out." If there were any windows, they were glazed with paper that had been oiled with hog's lard. The floors were made of three-inch "puncheons" of green ash so unevenly hewn that three-legged stools alone remained stable. Every box and every bit of board that "came from the East" was precious; for the tables, bedsteads, bureaus, and many of the kitchen utensils were fashioned from hard timber. One pot, one kettle, one fryingpan, and one tea-kettle-all of them hung about the open fireplace- were the furnishings of the kitchen. Opposite to the front door, shelves, varying in length according to the wealth of the owner, contained pewter plates and perhaps odd bits of china. More frequently, however, rough bureaus and chests were constructed of bark. Four small crutches driven into the ground supported poles that braced the top of a table. A larger crutch sustaining poles that had been let into the sides of the cabin formed the frame of a "catamount" bedstead. The spring-bed was of elm bark, closely woven after the manner of a basket. When all other "comfortables" failed, the good housewife spun a covering of cattle's hair for her children, or she sent them up the five-runged ladder to the loft, with its uncertain floor of 1 "shakes." Those were the days when the necessities of life elsewhere became the luxuries of life in Joinwater. Fine meal there was none. A very coarse quality THE FIRST DECADE. was cracked in a mortar hollowed out of a white-oak stump,-the pestle being attached to a spring pole, like the "swipe" of a well. Aside from this "plumping-mill" a few cabins were furnished with rudely-cut stones, so hard to turn that the operator was glad to be "spelled," thus giving him a chance to feed the corn through the "eye." Meal of any kind, pounded, soaked, or cracked, represented so much hard work that it was eked out with pumpkin in the process of making "pone,"-just as the New-England housekeeper of that time economized by baking her mince pies with an undercrust of rye. In place of tea and coffee came roasted corn, peas, rye, or wheat. In place of candles there were seasoned sticks, or the bark of the hickory. An infusion of butternut bark was a substitute for calomel, and cherry for Peruvian bark. sociable "tea-drinking" was often prepared "before the face and eyes" of the guests, the same old bake-kettle serving to fry cakes of several kinds, A |