Fig. 39. Framework of a ship.
When the farmer reached the fertile, treeless prairies he was compelled to economize in lumber. Some genius soon discovered that the best and most scientific method of constructing the frame of a house was along the lines of ship construction ([Fig. 39]): that is, ribs, joined to a sill or sills, encircling the entire structure and placed at equal distances apart. Two keels or sills joined together by joists, straight ribs—joists—instead of curved ones, a roof instead of a deck, and the balloon frame ([Fig. 40])—the best of all frames when properly constructed,—was invented. Unwittingly the ship construction, slightly modified, was adopted. In this frame the westerner departed radically from the style of his ancestors, but he could not be satisfied with a plain oversail projection. He could not afford the heavy box cornice. Having succeeded so well on the frame, he set about inventing a new style of decoration for the projecting eaves, but the cornice was not a success. The decorations shown in [Figs. 41] and [42] serve to make hideous many a cheap dry-goods-box house, which blisters and cracks in the hot prairie winds. These houses sometimes receive no paint or one coat, or at most two, and in a few years, what with storm and sun, mischievous boys and wind cracks, this ginger-bread, dog-eared cornice, made of inch lumber by the use of scroll saw, looks as dilapidated as a college boy after a cane-rush.
Fig. 40. The balloon frame.
Fig. 42.
The jig-saw cornice.
Fig. 41.
Too elaborate and short-lived.
The thought of permanent beauty, as well as economy and usefulness, should enter into the plans of a house. But what is beauty? I am well aware that many of my readers will not agree with me, for
“The standard of beauty ofttimes it doth vary:
Two pretty girls are Eliza and Mary.”