Artistic beauty is not usually considered an attribute of log-cabins; but I can testify to the beauty of many that stood upon the banks of Blue,--among them the house of Bays. The main building consisted of two ground-floor rooms, each with a front door and a half-story room above. A clapboard-covered porch extended across the entire front of the house, which faced westward toward Blue. Back of the main building was a one-story kitchen, and adjoining each ground-floor room was a huge chimney, built of small logs four to six inches in diameter. These chimneys, thickly plastered on the inside with clay, were built with a large opening at the top, and widened downward to the fireplace, which was eight or ten feet square, and nearly as high as the low ceiling of the room. The purpose of these generous dimensions was to prevent the wooden chimney from burning. The fire, while the chimney was new, was built in the centre of the enormous hearth that the flames might not touch the walls, but after a time the heat burnt the clay to the hardness of brick, and the fire was then built against the back wall. By pointing up the cracks, and adding a coat of clay now and then, the walls soon became entirely fireproof, and a fire might safely be kindled that would defy Boreas in his bitterest zero mood. An open wood fire is always cheering; so our humble folk of the wilderness, having little else to cheer them during the long winter evenings, were mindful to be prodigal in the matter of fuel, and often burned a cord of wood between candle-light and bedtime on one of their enormous hearths. A cord of wood is better than a play for cheerfulness, and a six-foot back-log will make more mirth than Dan Rice himself ever created. Economy did not enter into the question, for wood was nature's chief weapon against her enemies, the settlers; and the question was not how to save, but how to burn it.