The half-timber construction of the Middle Ages was only the artistic treatment of this crude system of building. In drawing number 6 is a very simple half-timber house which shows practically no attempt at all to decorate. The construction is perfectly evident, and there are no curves and carving used to ornament the building, as can be seen on some of the more elaborate houses of the cities. This simple building system was the traditional background of the English carpenter, and it is not at all extraordinary that he brought his methods of building over to this country. [Illustration: TYPE OF FRAMING FOR COLONIAL OF FIRST PERIOD BRACED FRAME AS DEVELOPED FROM NEW ENGLAND COLONIAL] Even the custom of calling in the neighbors and feasting them when a house-raising was celebrated came directly from English traditions. The old post-and-truss construction of the early English houses required framing on the ground and then lifting into position afterward. Records show that the people from the surrounding countryside were called in to help, and their wages of hire were paid by the house owner with a huge feast. In early Colonial days the nearest neighbors were likewise called in to help raise the frame, and the host was supposed to feed the gathering, after the work was finished, and make a jolly party of eating and drinking—a sort of social debt, but not looked upon as wages, as in older days. The hard climate which the earliest American colonists had to face and also the abundant supply of wood which lay at their very doors were factors which slightly altered the traditions of building. After the house had been framed and the spaces between the timbers filled with plaster or masonry, the exterior was covered over with clapboards or shingles as an extra covering against the weather. The use of clapboards or shingles as an exterior covering of course was not new, for many English farmhouses show that it was used in that country. But with this difference in exterior appearance, the framing underneath was the same as shown in Fig. 7. _Revolt against New England Traditions_ It was only a matter of time when the thinning-down process began to make itself evident in the traditions of Colonial carpentry, and from its clumsy beginnings it evolved into the more or less standard form of construction which we call the brace-frame. The difficulty of securing good labor in the West, and also the increasing use of the power sawmill, made it possible and necessary to standardize a quick and easy method of building which would meet the great demand for houses in rapidly growing communities. Quoting from the New York _Tribune_ of January 18, 1855, we have a very interesting account of the conditions which were then prevalent that brought about this later variation of the wooden frame structure. The conditions there described seem almost like our modern difficulties with labor and materials.