The corner-posts are three feet high, the ridge-pole seven feet and six inches above the ground, and the hut may be from five to eight feet square or made oblong, as a matter of choice.
A frame of scantling should be made for this lean-to the same as if a wooden structure were to be built, and it must be nailed together well to stand the strain of the wind blowing hard against it. In general construction the frame should appear like Fig. 19; and to the sticks the edges of the thatched framework of reeds is to be lashed fast with grass, either before or after the thatching is done.
A brush-house or any hut built on or near the ground is not so cool to stay in as one in the trees, but it is, of course, much easier to construct, as the boy builders do not have to move about so carefully when at work, and their materials can be picked up quickly.
Brush huts and houses can be built on the plains where trees are scarce, but in a country rich in woods and forests the boys prefer the tree huts, not only for their cool location, but on account of the romance involved in the climbing up to an inaccessible eyrie.
Chapter XXI
WALKING-STICKS
How to Grow Them for Pleasure and Profit
Here are some suggestions for an entirely new and fascinating out-of-doors occupation.
It has become a habit with me when walking in the woods to keep a sharp lookout for stocks for walking-sticks, so that in the course of many years I have got together quite a unique collection. To these a number have been added through exchanges with friends.
This hobby has borne other fruit than the mere gathering together of curious sticks. For have I not learned the scientific and common names of most of our trees and shrubs, their habits, and their values, their uses in the arts and sciences, their medicinal qualities! So you see, my young reader, what unthinking people would call a useless and eccentric occupation (this gathering of old sticks) has in reality proved to be an innocent and instructive pastime, and I propose to continue to ride this walking-stick hobby just as diligently as I used to ride grandpa’s walking-cane to “Banbury Cross” when a child.
My first interesting cane capture consisted of a very curiously shaped natural stick as shown in Fig. 1. It was of a young hickory sapling at whose roots grew a bitter-sweet vine, which, being of an ambitious turn of mind, had taken many turns around the sapling in its eagerness to climb up in the world. The sapling in the mean time extended its bark well over the leader of the tough and clinging bitter-sweet till but little of it was to be seen. At last the sapling, feeling unusually vigorous, burst asunder the clinging bitter-sweet vine, the result being a very unique walking-stick, and a good illustration of the “survival of the fittest.”