The Laird, Who
Formerly Lived In A Castle, Now Lives In A House; Sometimes
Sufficiently Neat, But Seldom Very Spacious Or Splendid.
The
Tacksmen and the Ministers have commonly houses.
Wherever there is
a house, the stranger finds a welcome, and to the other evils of
exterminating Tacksmen may be added the unavoidable cessation of
hospitality, or the devolution of too heavy a burden on the
Ministers.
Of the houses little can be said. They are small, and by the
necessity of accumulating stores, where there are so few
opportunities of purchase, the rooms are very heterogeneously
filled. With want of cleanliness it were ingratitude to reproach
them. The servants having been bred upon the naked earth, think
every floor clean, and the quick succession of guests, perhaps not
always over-elegant, does not allow much time for adjusting their
apartments.
Huts are of many gradations; from murky dens, to commodious
dwellings.
The wall of a common hut is always built without mortar, by a
skilful adaptation of loose stones. Sometimes perhaps a double
wall of stones is raised, and the intermediate space filled with
earth. The air is thus completely excluded. Some walls are, I
think, formed of turfs, held together by a wattle, or texture of
twigs. Of the meanest huts, the first room is lighted by the
entrance, and the second by the smoke hole. The fire is usually
made in the middle. But there are huts, or dwellings of only one
story, inhabited by gentlemen, which have walls cemented with
mortar, glass windows, and boarded floors.
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