Now we come to the most delightful of all forms of a log house. The one
shown in Fig. 241 is a very simple one, such as might be built by any
group of boys, but I have lived in such houses down South that were very
much more elaborate. Frequently they have a second story which extends
like the roof over the open gallery between the pens; the chimneys are at
the gable ends, that is, on the outside of the house, and since we will
have quite a space devoted to fireplaces and chimneys, it is only
necessary to say here that in many portions of the South the fireplaces,
while broad, are often quite shallow and not nearly so deep as some found
in the old houses on Long Island, in New York, and the Eastern States. The
open gallery makes a delightful, cool lounging place, also a place for the
ladies to sit and sew, and serves as an open-air dining-room during the
warm weather; this sort of house is inappropriate and ill fitted for the
climate which produced the olebo, the mossback, and the Kanuck, but
exactly suited for our Southern States and very pleasant even as far
north as Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. I have lived in one part of every
summer for the last twenty-two years in the mountains of northern
Pennsylvania. The saddle-bag may be built by boys with the two rooms ten
by ten and a gallery six feet wide, or the two rooms six by six and a
gallery five feet wide; the plan may be seen on the sketch below the house
(Fig. 241).
Where you only expect to use the house in the summer months, a two-pen or
saddle-bag can be used with comfort even in the Northern States, but in
the winter-time in such States as Michigan and part of New York, the
gallery would be filled up with drifting snow.