Fig.48 - Scribner's Panic-Grass. Design made of four grass heads.
CHAPTER IX
A HOUSE MADE OF GRASS
Real people live in grass houses way off in the Philippine Islands. That is, their houses are made of bamboo, which is a kind of giant grass. It must be a pretty airy, comfortable house in summer, and it is always summer in the Philippines, but we never see that kind of houses here. One reason is because in most of our country a grass house would be very cold in winter, and another reason for not building them is because the bamboo grows only in the extreme south, and even down there people want more substantial homes.
A prettier playhouse, though, could not be devised, and if you could see a Filipino house you would want it immediately, but since you cannot have a real one you can have the fun of making a little doll Filipino house, and of making it exactly as the little brown Filipino men make theirs. Suppose you gather some grass and twigs now, and build the little house for your doll.
Some of the queer little people whose home is in the Philippine Islands perch their houses like birds' nests up in the trees, but often they are built on stilts to lift them high from the ground. Our little house ([Fig. 50]) shall be on stilts. We will make the floor first. If you do not understand how to measure by inches, ask an older person to help you.
The Floor
Find two straight, round sticks, not quite as large round as a lead-pencil. The sticks must be cut six and a half inches long, then two sticks of the same kind five inches long; after that there must be six more sticks five inches long. Split these last six sticks in half lengthwise.
The Philippine people do not use nails, or screws, or glue, and not even wooden pegs, in building their houses; they bind and tie the parts together with rattan, and as we are going to build just as they do we, too, will tie the parts of our house together, but will use raffia in place of the rattan.