CHAPTER VII. “AND SOLD TO——”  

When the house was up as far as the second floor and the first mortgage, talk rose touching on the furnishings. To me it seemed there would be ample time a decade or so thence to begin thinking of the furnishings. So far as I could tell there was no hurry and probably there never would be any hurry. For the job had reached that stage so dismally familiar to any one who ever started a house with intent to live in it when completed, if ever. I refer to the stage when a large and variegated assortment of hired help are ostensibly busy upon the premises and yet everything seems practically to be at a standstill. From the standpoint of a mere bystander whose only function is to pay the bills, it seems that the workmen are only coming to the job of a morning because they hate the idea of hanging round their own homes all day with nothing to do. 

W

 So it was with us. Sawing and hammering and steam fitting and plumbing and stone-lying and brick-lying were presumed to be going on; laborers were wielding the languid pick; a roof layer was defying the laws of gravitation on our ridgepole; at stated intervals there were great gobs of payments on account of this or that to be met and still and yet and notwithstanding, to the lay eye the progress appeared infinitesimal. For the first time I could understand why Pharaoh or Rameses or whoever it was that built the Pyramids displayed peevishness toward the Children of Israel. Indeed I developed a cordial sympathy for him. He had my best wishes. They were four or five thousand years late, but even so he had 'em and welcome. 

 Accordingly when the matter of investing in furnishings was broached I stoutly demurred. As I recall, I spoke substantially as follows: 

 “Why all this mad haste? Rome wasn't built in a day, as I have often heard, and in view of my own recent experiences I am ready to make affidavit to the fact. I'll go further than that. I'll bet any sum within reason, up to a million dollars, that the meanest smokehouse in Rome was not built in a day. No Roman smokehouse—Ionic, Doric, Corinthian or Old Line Etruscan—is barred. 

 “Unless workingmen have changed a whole lot since those times, it was not possible to begin to start to commence to get ready to go ahead to proceed to advance with that smokehouse or any other smokehouse in a day. And after they did get started they dallied along and 

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