the roof, and nail them fast to the plate, placing the end ones inside the studs, which you will let run up promiscuously, to be cut off by the rafter. Now lay the garret floor by all means before you put on the roof, and you will find that you have saved 50 per cent of hard labor. The rafters, if supported so as not to be over 10 feet long, will be strong enough of the 2 × 4 stuff. Bevel the ends and nail fast to the joist. Then there is no strain upon the sides by the weight of the roof, which may be covered with shingles or other materials—the cheapest being composition or cement roofs. To make one of this kind, take soft, spongy, thick paper, and tack it upon the boards in courses like shingles. Commence at the top with hot tar and saturate the paper, upon which sift evenly fine gravel, pressing it in while hot—that is, while tar and gravel are both hot. One coat will make a tight roof; two coats will make it more durable. Put up your partitions of stuff 1 × 4, unless where you want to support the upper joist—then use stuff 2 × 4, with strips nailed on top, for the joist to rest upon, fastening all together by nails, wherever timbers touch. Thus you will have a frame without a tenon or mortise, or brace, and yet it is far cheaper, and incalculably stronger when finished, than though it were composed of timbers 10 inches square, with a thousand auger holes and a hundred days’ work with the chisel and adze, making holes and pins to fill them. “To lay out and frame a building so that all its parts will come together requires the skill of a master mechanic, and a host of men and a deal of hard work to lift the great sticks of timber into position. To erect a balloon building requires about as much mechanical skill as it does to build a board fence. Any farmer who is handy with the saw, iron square, and hammer, with one of his boys or a common laborer to assist him, can go to work and put up a frame for an outbuilding, and finish it off with his own labor, just as well as to hire a carpenter to score and hew great oak sticks and fill them full of mortises, all by the science of the ‘square rule.’ It is a waste of labor that we should all lend our aid to put a stop to. Besides, it will enable many a farmer to improve his place with new buildings, who, though he has long needed them, has shuddered at the thought of cutting down half of the best trees in his wood-lot, and then giving half a year’s work to hauling it home and paying for what I do know is the wholly useless labor of framing. If it had not been for the knowledge of balloon frames, Chicago and San Francisco could never have arisen, as they did, from little villages to great cities in a single year. It is not alone city buildings, which are supported by one another, that may be thus erected, but those upon the open prairie, where the wind has a sweep from Mackinaw to the Mississippi, for there they are built, and stand