Haliburton thought that, with some improvements, he could
send one of Mr. Buchanan's messages up in thirty-seven
working-nights.
IV
INDEPENDENCE
I own to a certain mortification in confessing that
after this interregnum, forced upon us by so long a
period of non-intercourse, we never resumed precisely
the same constancy of communication as that which I
have tried to describe at the beginning. The apology
for this benumbment, if I may so call it, will suggest
itself to the thoughtful reader.
It is indeed astonishing to think that we so readily
accept a position when we once understand it. You buy a
new house. You are fool enough to take out a staircase
that you may put in a bathing-room. This will be done in
a fortnight, everybody tells you, and then everybody
begins. Plumbers, masons, carpenters, plasterers,
skimmers, bell-hangers, speaking-tube men, men who make
furnace-pipe, paper-hangers, men who scrape off the old
paper, and other men who take off the old paint with
alkali, gas men, city-water men, and painters begin. To
them are joined a considerable number of furnace-men's
assistants, stovepipe-men's assistants, mason's
assistants, and hodmen who assist the assistants of the
masons, the furnace-men, and the pipe-men. For a day or
two these all take possession of the house and reduce it
to chaos.
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