Many points relating to the use of wood and appertaining equally to buildings whose walls are of brick or stone, we may find farther on. In closing, let me adjure you by all your hope of a comfortable, safe, and satisfying house,—by all the common-sense in your possession and all the capital at your command,—resolve that you will never—no, never—build your house of unseasoned timber.



LETTER XX.

From John.

A SURRENDER AND CHANGE OF BASE.

MY DEAR ARCHITECT: It was very well for Noah and the other antediluvians, who had any little building to do, to wait for their timber to season. When a man has a thousand years or so to live, he can afford to take things easy. It's different in this great and glorious nineteenth century, when the chief aim is to make the shortest time on record. You know our Western farmers have a brisk way of going out into their thousand-acre wheatfields before breakfast, reaping, threshing, and grinding the grain, which their thrifty wives make into biscuit for the morning meal; and you've heard of the young man who caught a sheep in the morning, sheared it, carded, spun, and wove the wool, cut the cloth and made the coat to wear at his own wedding in the evening. Young America don't understand why a pine or an oak tree can't be put over the course, like a sheep or an acre of grain. Besides, you talk like an old fogy. When a man says he has decided to build a house, he means he is ready to begin,—right off; and if our lumber-dealers won't keep dry stuff (which of course they won't unless obliged to), then he must use green.

I'm surprised you don't admire the fanciful brackets and other wooden straddle-bugs people are so fond of decorating their houses with. By the way, if these brackets are purely ornamental, there ought not to be two alike, any more than you'd have two busts or two pictures alike in one room. Suppose you collect an assortment of the rich and rarest specimens, and hang them, like Lord Dundreary's shirts, "all in a wo," on somebody's villa. Wouldn't they be lovely? I'd like to pursue the subject, but have other fish to fry.

Mrs. John is right, as usual; our house will be a stone one, and will not be built until next year. Meantime, the timber will have a chance to season, and we shall have time to study up our plan and sort of get the hang of it.

Now I want you to transfer your interest to another case. Who should drop down upon us, last week, but our old friend Fred? Been out West for the last dozen years or more; enterprising and prosperous, you'll be glad to hear. Come home to stay, bringing a wife who is sure to make Mrs. John jealous, a triplet of boys (the oldest half as big as his dad), and plenty of stamps. He has bought the Captain Adams place, and is going to move off the old gambrel-roofed house (has a dozen or two men at work already) and build a brick one in place of it. I've given him the benefit of your advice in my behalf, and now he invites me, in Western fashion, to stand aside and give him a chance,—which I'm very willing to do, for he's a tiptop fellow and so is Mrs. Fred. Eastern people Westernized,—if you can find a better sort of neighbors I'd like an introduction!

Yours,

JOHN.



LETTER XXI.

From the Architect.

HOSPITALITY AND SUNLIGHT.

DEAR JOHN: Our old friend shall not be neglected. He has only to present his case and make known his wishes. Meantime, in arranging your own plans, be generous if you can; not lavish or extravagant in expenditure, but generous in feeling and expression. Let your doors and windows be wide, and your roof be high. A wide door is far more convenient than a narrow one, usually much better in appearance; and for the windows,—when shall we learn the unspeakable worth of the bountiful light of heaven? Does Mrs. John complain that the sunlight will fade her carpets? Let them fade, and know of a truth that all the colors of all the carpets of all the looms that ever throbbed are not worth to the civilized mortals who tread the dust-containing fabrics one single hour of unobstructed sunshine. Is it that our deeds are evil, that we seem to love darkness rather than light; or is it through our ignorant exclusion of this glorious gift, "offspring of heaven first born," that we are left to wander in so many darksome ways? Be generous, did I say? rather try to be just to yourself. Practically, the larger opening is scarcely more expensive than the small one. The work of construction is no greater, and the material for the door or window costs but little more than the thicker wall of wood, brick, or stone.



I remember an old farm-house on the side of one of our rocky New England hills, a type of a fashion almost extinct, broad and brooding, low in the walls, small windows and far between, high roof, wide gables, pierced by windows of various sizes, and queerly located, as if the huge garret were inhabited by a mixed company of dwarfs and giants, each with his own particular window suited to his height; in the centre a massive chimney like the base of a tower, out of which the smoke rolled in lazy curves. At the east side of the house, under the narrow eaves, and opening, I think, into the long kitchen, was one huge window, as high as the others, and as wide as it was high. How it found a place there I never knew, but nothing could be more benign in effect than its generous breadth. The panes were small and green and warped, after the manner of glass known to former times; but through it the sun poured a flood of warm light every morning, and on winter evenings the glow of the firelight within made a grand illumination far across the snowy hillsides; yet I don't think the old window was ever truly appreciated. The others seemed to despise it, and try to keep at a distance in their narrowness and regularity. The little square loopholes in the gables lifted their diminutive eyebrows in contempt; even the green door looked blank and scowling, as though at a possible rival. I fancy the housekeeper fretted at the larger curtain covering this wide, unwinking eye, and the extra labor required on cleaning-days. But this one great square window was the sole redeeming feature beneath the roof of the ancient farm-house. Beneath the roof, I say. The roof itself was, and is, and ever shall be the great charm of those antiquated houses,—not of the old alone, but if any new house shall ever rise, if you succeed in building your own so that it shall seem to be the abiding-place of the incarnate genius of domestic happiness, the roof of your earthly paradise will be bold and high. Pierced by windows it may be, and broken by gables, but steep enough to shed rain and snow, and high enough to be plainly visible to the coming guest, promising safety and welcome beneath its tranquil shade. Practically, the steep roof is better than any other, because a flat one cannot be as permanently covered with any known material at so little cost, the multitudes of cheap and durable patent roofings to the contrary notwithstanding. By steep roofs I mean any that have sufficient pitch to allow the use of slate or shingle. Such need not be intricate or difficult of construction to look well, but must be honest and useful. They can be neither unless visible, and here we see the holy alliance of use and beauty; for the character and expression of a building depend almost wholly upon the roof. You will lose, too, under the flat roof, the roomy garret of the old high-roofed houses. These have for me a wonderful fascination. Whether the rain upon the shingles, the mingled fragrance of seeds and drying herbs, the surprising bigness of the chimney, the mysteries hidden in the worm-eaten chests, the almost saintly charm of the long-unused spinning-wheels, crumbling mementos of the patient industry of former generations, or the shine of the stars through the chinks in the shrunken boards, the old garret and all its associations are among the "long, long thoughts." I sometimes doubt whether the modern conveniences we are so fond of proclaiming are really an equivalent to the rising generation for this happiest of playrooms, this storehouse of heirlooms, this silent but potent tie, that binds us to the life, the labor, and the love of the past.



Let there be light, too, in this upper story. Spinning spiders and stinging wasps are not half so terrible to the children who will make a half-way paradise of the garret as the darkness that is covered by an unlighted roof.

If you have been living in cottage-chambers,—rooms in which a full-sized man can hardly stand erect in the centre, and a well-grown baby scarcely creep at the sides, unventilated, heated beyond endurance during the hot summer days, and retaining their heat through the long, wakeful nights,—rooms in which the furniture must stand at various distances from the walls as if marshalled for the house-cleaning battle, but in which even the making of beds is a work of supreme difficulty,—if you've been living in such rooms as these, I don't wonder, whatever architects or other men may say, that Mrs. John objects, and insists on good, square chambers. But good, square chambers no more require flat roofs than good, square common-sense requires a flat head. I don't believe you will contrive a house, of whatever form or size, that may not be covered more cheaply, more securely, and more tastefully by a steep roof than by a flat one. Of course, I'm supposing your house to be isolated. Buildings in crowded streets or in blocks require, on all accounts, entirely different treatment. By all means, then, have wide doors, generous windows, and high roofs; and if you must build with strict economy you may be morally certain that your house, though not perhaps as altogether lovely as you might wish, will still be cheerful and homelike.

Allow me to add, that, while faithfully striving to build a house that shall be honest and cheerful, you will surely find yourself growing in the same direction.



LETTER XXII.

From Fred.

UNPROFESSIONAL SAGACITY.

DEAR ARCHITECT: Our mutual friend John recommends me to ask your advice in regard to plans for my new house. Possibly you may help me, although the floor plans sent herewith are about right; rooms enough and of the right size, the principal ones adapted to the usual widths of carpeting. I am willing to expend something for the outside appearance,—in fact, intend to have the best looking house in town,—but think it would be foolish to build more rooms or larger than I want, much more so to dispense with needed room in order to get a certain proportion of parts. I merely mention this because, with all due respect, I am doubtless the best judge of my own wants, and don't care to have the dimensions of the building changed. The relative location of the different apartments is also satisfactory, except perhaps some slight deficiencies in the rear portion, which I left incomplete for want of time. As to exterior, would like a French roof and tower, with fashionable style of finish throughout.

Shall commence laying foundation next week, and you will please consider yourself invited to eat turkey with us in the new house next Thanksgiving.

Truly,

FRED.



LETTER XXIII.

From the Architect.

STAIRWAYS AND OUTLOOKS.

Dear Fred: Your plans are before me, also your letter; also the proverbs of Solomon, from which I read, in order to fortify myself for the work before me, sundry suggestions concerning the duty of faithful friends,—the undaunted, disagreeable sort who cry aloud and spare not. It's quite right for you to try to show what you would like, quite true that you ought to know your own needs and tastes better than any one else, and though I cannot agree with you, I'm glad you have a mind of your own; those who have not are of all men most miserable to deal with, most difficult to suit. Indeed, when a man feels clearly a lack in his own home-life which nothing but a new house will supply, he is sure to have some decided notions as to what that house shall be. But when you assure me in good set terms that this plan is your beau-ideal, I must ask, also with profound respect, if you know what you are talking about. Put in your foundation, by all means, but remember how much easier it is to change a few lines on paper than to remove a stone wall. It is not a pleasant job to cut a door into a finished and furnished room, or even to change the hanging of it. This house, if I understand aright, you intend for a permanent home. How immeasurably better to spend six months, if need be, in perfecting the plans, than by and by to be tormented with defects that can only be removed by great expense and trouble! It's a grand thing to go ahead, provided you are right; the more "go," the worse, if you happen to be on the wrong track. Candidly, your plan hardly deserves to be called a beginning. The arrangement of the rear part, which you chiefly omit, is, in fact, the most difficult and important of the whole. But I've promised Sister Jane a chapter on kitchens, of which, when the time comes, you can have the benefit. Meanwhile, complete the unfinished part of your plan,—it only requires you to spend a few brief moments,—and I will venture some suggestions on this which lies before me.

The front stairs as laid down would reach just half-way to the second floor,—a peculiarity of amateur sketches so universal that we will say nothing more about it. But what principle of good taste or hospitality requires you to blockade the main entrance to your house with this same staircase? Do you send all your visitors, of whatever name or nation, direct to the upper regions the moment they enter? Why, then, make the northwest passage thither the most conspicuous route from the door? Do you intend to restrict the family to the back stairs, which by your showing are, like the famous descensus Averno, wonderfully easy to go down, but mighty hard to get up again? Yet you place these front stairs at the very farthest remove from the rooms most constantly used in both stories. Perhaps you propose to announce "apartments to let" on the second and third floors. No? What reason, then, for imitating hotels, lodging-houses, double-barrelled tenements, and other public and semi-public buildings from which a short cut to the street is essential? Don't tell me you wish them to be ornamental as well as useful. I know that; but remember the stairs are built for the house, not the house for the stairs. You had better lose them wholly as an ornamental feature, than destroy the charm of what should be the most prepossessing portion of the interior. Moreover, they can have no pleasure-giving beauty if manifestly out of place,—a safe rule for general application. Build them where they will be most useful, that is, as near the centre of the house as possible; make them grand and gorgeous as the steps to an Oriental palace,—so broad and easy of ascent that the upward and onward way will be as tempting as were the Alps to Mr. Longfellow's aspiring youth. But keep them away from the front door,—out of the principal hall, which should be open, airy, and free, suggesting something besides an everlasting getting up stairs. If the staircase hall cannot be arranged at right angles to the main hall, an arch or ornamental screen may be introduced, partially separating the two and giving character to both.

Have you been living in a city of late? It must be, else why so complacent with a narrow hall, steep, obtrusive stairs, and, O, why, tell me why, do you not fix the location of your windows with some regard to views, not only out of the house but through it. I remember one country dwelling built by a retired civilian in the inevitable city style; windows at the end giving a narrow view of the road in front, while the entire side walls were absolutely blank and bare, never so much as a knot-hole through which the occupants could get a glimpse of the field and forest that stretched broadly away at either side. I've no doubt the owner hung oil-paintings on his parlor walls, and thought them more lovely than all out-doors,—especially when he remembered their cost. The old Roman who declared his soldiers made a bigger racket with their arms than Jupiter with his thunderbolts, was modest beyond comparison with such a man. Your arrangement is not quite so bad as that of the aforesaid civilian, but, like hosts of others, you fail to make the most of your opportunities. Suppose you were able to secure for a small sum a landscape painted by one of the masters and esteemed of great value. You would think it folly to let the chance pass unimproved. By simply cutting a hole in the wall you may have a picture infinitely grander than human artist ever painted; grander in its teaching, in its actual beauty, its variety, and its permanency; grander in everything except its market value. I am not sure but your children's children will find some one window in the old homestead that commands a view of the everlasting hills, an heirloom even of greater pecuniary value than the rarest work of art. Do not forget, either, the views through the house. If your windows can be placed so that throwing open the doors from room to room or across the hall will reveal a charming prospect in opposite directions, there's a sense of being in the midst of an all-surrounding beauty, hardly possible when you seem to look upon it from one side only. You have surely been abiding in a city. The interior of your house is all that concerns you or your family. The outside—French roof and fashionable finish, forsooth!—is for the public to admire. They are not to have any intimation what sort of a home is sheltered by your monstrous Mansard; and it never occurs to you that there can be anything out of doors worth building your house to see.



Here is another unhappy result of evil examples,—the sliding-doors between the two parlors, as you call them,—an arrangement convenient enough, sometimes indispensable in houses built on crowded streets, houses that only breathe the dusty air and catch the struggling sunbeams at their narrow and remote extremities,—air and sunlight at nobody knows how many hundred dollars the front foot. They are worse than useless in such a house as yours.

I say your plan is scarcely a beginning; the same of this letter. But it's enough for once.



LETTER XXIV.

From Fred.

IN A MULTITUDE OF COUNSELLORS IS SAFETY.

MY DEAR ARCHITECT: Your criticisms are not wholly without reason. I can only plead haste and inexperience.

Have been studying arrangement of rear part, and seem to get farther and farther from a satisfactory result. The kitchen and dining-room must be convenient to each other, but not adjacent; the pantries and larder easy to get at; back stairs accessible from all parts of the house, and side entrance worked in somehow; washbowl and water-closet not far off, but out of sight, and the whole department quite isolated from front hall. My wife can't think of pantry and store-rooms at the south side, nor do we want kitchen or outer door at the north. John's sister-in-law, Miss Jane, who appears to have some sensible notions, thinks a kitchen should always have windows on opposite sides for light and ventilation. John says I should have a kitchen large enough for wash-trays and a set kettle, but one of my neighbors, who has just built a house, advises a laundry in the cellar. Altogether it's a troublesome problem, and, frankly, I give it up.

Do you really expect us to dispense with sliding-doors between the parlors? I'm sure that won't pass. We would almost as soon give up the bay-windows,—everybody has them nowadays.

Truly,

Fred.



LETTER XXV.

From the Architect.

DOORS AND SLIDING-DOORS, WINDOWS AND BAY-WINDOWS.

DEAR FRED: "Everybody has them!" What a monstrous load of iniquity and nonsense that scape-goat has to carry! Everybody wears tight boots and bustles and chignons and stove-pipe hats. Everybody smokes and brags, and cheats in trade, not to mention a host of other abominations that can give only this excuse for their being: they are common to a few millions of people who have not learned to declare a reason for the faith that is in them or the works that grow out of them.

Let us take time to consider this sliding-door question,—folding-doors they used to be, and, truly, I'm not sure that the rollers are any improvement on the hinges,—there is something dreadfully barny about sliding-doors. Why do you want either? You have one room which you call the parlor, supposed to be the best in the house, as to its location, its finish, its furniture, and its use. Three of its walls are handsomely frescoed, curtained, and decorated with pictures or other ornaments; the fourth is one huge barricade of panel-work. When the two parts are closed you have a constant fancy of rheumatic currents stealing through the cracks, and an ever-present fear lest they should suddenly fly open with "impetuous recoil, grating harsh thunder" on their wheels, and not exactly letting Satan in, but everything in the room fall out; an idle fear, for they can only be shoved asunder by dint of much pushing and pulling, especially if they are warped by having one side exposed to more heat than the other, as usually happens. Being at last opened by hook or crook, another room is revealed, commonly smaller, more shabby in appearance, a sort of poor-relation attachment, spoiling the completeness and artistic unity of the larger one. By care you may avoid something of this; if you follow the fashion, you will have the most of it. When the two rooms are twins, alike in every respect, they are really one large room, fitted up, for economical reasons, with a movable screen in the centre, by means of which you may warm (excepting rheumatic currents as above) and use one half at a time. But call things by their right names. Don't talk grandly about your two parlors when you mean two halves of one. Have wide doors, by all means, not only between rooms but into main hall,—four, six, or eight feet, if the rooms are so wide and high that they shall not be disproportionately large. Then, if you must have the whole broadside of sliding or folding doors, let the two rooms thus connected be of different styles but equal richness,—different, that they shall not seem one room cut in two,—peers, that one shall not shame and cheapen the other.

Doors are a great bother, at best. I wish they could be abolished. They are always slamming, punching holes in the plastering with their knobs, creaking on their hinges, bruising the piano, pinching babies' fingers, and making old folks see stars when they get up in the night to look for burglars. Heavy curtains are infinitely more graceful, equally warm, and not half so stubbornly unmanageable. Then think of entering a room. By her steps the goddess is revealed; but who can walk like a goddess while forcing an entrance between two sliding-doors, maybe wedging fast half-way through? How different from passing in quiet dignity beneath the rich folds of overhanging drapery! But I suppose we must leave all that to the Orientals, at present.

"You would almost as soon give up the bay-windows!" Well, you might e'en do worse than that. Now let your indignation boil. Bay-windows are very charming things sometimes; sometimes they are nuisances. Some have been so appropriate and altogether lovely that any pepper box contrivance thrusting itself out from the main walls and looking three ways for Sunday is supposed to be a bower of beauty, a perfect pharos of observation, an abundant recompense for unmitigated ugliness and inconvenience in the rest of the building. Truly, a well-ordered bay-window will often change a gloomy, graceless room into a cheerful and artistic one, but large, simple windows are sometimes rather to be chosen than too much bay. In many, perhaps the majority, of cases, it is wiser to extend the whole wall of the room in the form of a half-hexagon or three sides of an octagon, costing no more, and repaying the cost far more abundantly.

While on the subject let us finish it. If you indulge in a regular bay-window, make it large enough to be of real use; don't feel constrained to build it with more than fifteen sides; remember that two stories will not cost twice as much as one, while the second is pretty certain to be the pleasanter; don't carry the ceiling of the main room level and unbroken into the bay, or, because a certain one you may have seen looks well in its place, resolve to have another just like it, regardless of its surroundings. I sometimes fancy there must be a factory where bay-windows are made for the wholesale trade, all of one style, strictly orthodox, five-sided, bracketed, blinded, painted with striped paint, and ready to barnacle on wherever required. In the stereotyped pattern the blinds are apt to be troublesome. If outside, they clash against each other and refuse to be fastened open; while inside they are a mighty maze of folds, flaps, brass buts, and rolling slats. In the first case, wide piers between the sash are necessary; in the second, boxings for the blinds. Both require ample room, which, fortunately, you have. Sixthly, and in conclusion, there is no one feature which may be more charming, combining so much of comfort and beauty, as windows of this class, from the simple opening, pushed forward a few inches beyond the wall face, to the broad extension of the entire room; but there be bays and bays.

Speaking of blinds,—what shall be done with the other windows? You will protest against concealing your elegant, single panes of plate-glass by outside blinds,—it won't answer to hide your light under a bushel in that way,—and yet while there is no complete finish without well-arranged inside shutters, they alone are sadly inefficient in rooms with a southern exposure, where light and air are needed. They may be fitted with boxings, into which they are folded, or arranged to slide into the wall. I like the old-fashioned boxing, window-seat and all, also the ancient close-panelled shutters. True they make a room pitch-dark when closed, and it is doubtless wisest to have some of their central folds made with movable slats, but they give a charming sense of security and seclusion when the wintry blasts roar around our castle. On the other hand, the light outside blinds, that shake and rattle and bang when the stormy winds "do blow, do blow," are a fair substitute for the cooling shade of forest-trees. You may have learned that life is a succession of compromises. Building in New England certainly is. No sooner do we get nicely fortified with furnaces, storm-porches, double windows, and forty tons of anthracite, than June bursts upon us with ninety degrees in the shade. Then how we despise our contrivances for keeping warm, and bless the ice-man! We wish the house was all piazza, and if it were not for burglars and mosquitoes, would abjure walls and roof and live in the open air. Just here is our dilemma. We go "from Greenland's icy mountains to India's coral strands" and back again every twelve months, whether we will or no, and are obliged to live in the same house through it all. It's really a desperate matter. I've been to the ant and the beasts and the birds. They recommend hibernating or migration, but our wings are too short for the one, our fur too thin for the other!

Seriously, you must not forget to prepare for extremes of climate. Fortunately the walls that most thoroughly resist the cold are effective against the heat. The doors and windows—the living, breathing, seeing, working part of the house—demand the twofold provision. You must have double windows in winter, to be taken off (laid away and more or less smashed up) in summer; outside blinds to ward off the summer sun, which may, in their turn, be removed when we are only too glad to welcome all the sunshine there is. The vestibules—portable storm-porches are not to be tolerated—must also be skilful doorkeepers, proof against hostile storms, but freely admitting the wandering zephyrs. Piazzas are not so easily managed. We like them broad and endless in July and August, but the shadows they cast we would fain remove when the very trees fold away their sunshades. Often a platform, terrace, balcony,—whatever you please to call it, practically a piazza without a roof,—is the best thing to have, for this will not keep the sun from the windows, when comfort requires it may be shaded by a movable awning, and by its sunny cheerfulness it will lengthen our out-door enjoyment two or three months in the year.

You are still floundering helplessly in the kitchen. I've no doubt Sister Jane has excellent ideas on the subject,—probably knows ten times as much about it as you do. Why not ask her to arrange matters for you?



LETTER XXVI.

From Fred.

EXPERIENCE KEEPS A DEAR SCHOOL.

MY DEAR ARCHITECT: We will let the sliding-doors slide, but hold on to the bay-windows. I've acted upon your suggestion, and called on Miss Jane to help me through the kitchen. She is studying the matter and will report to you soon. Meantime, will you give directions about other inside work? I want it to be ornamental and modern in style. Shall finish mostly in hard wood,—oak, walnut, or chestnut, perhaps mahogany and maple. Please give me your opinion on that point. What do you think of graining where hard wood is not used? Shall probably carpet throughout, and hope you will not change dimensions of rooms to spoil the fit of them. What about wainscoting halls or any of the rooms? Suppose common floors will answer, and common plastering for the walls, if I paper; but shall I,—or do you recommend frescoing; and what do you say to cornices and other stucco-work?

I've no time to go over all the points in your last. Some of them seem well put, others a little wild. But I give them a fair hearing and suppose you won't insist upon my adopting them. Am beginning to think I've a good deal to learn, and ought, I suppose, to be well satisfied to learn, in some other school than that of experience.

Truly,

FRED.



LETTER XXVII.

From the Architect.

FASHION AND ORNAMENT, HARD WOOD AND PAINT.

DEAR FRED: The tone of your last, just received, is hopeful. Conviction of ignorance is the only foundation on which Wisdom, or any other man, ever builded a house. But it must be a genuine agony, as I'm sure it is in your case; so you are forgiven for asking more questions in half a dozen lines than I can answer fully in a score of pages. Instead of taking them up separately, I might give you a chapter of first principles, hoping you would then need no special directions; but I find the value of most general observations lies, like Bunsby's, in the application of 'em. It's not enough to say, "Be honest and upright." Each particular falsehood and folly must be summoned, tried, and condemned.

You ask for a style of finish that must be ornamental and modern. But I don't understand your meaning; shall need more definite instruction. Is your house intended for ornamental purposes, as summer-houses, dove-cots, bird-cages, and the like, often are? Is it to be a museum, art-gallery, or memorial hall? Diamonds and pearls are commonly thought ornamental to those who can afford them; from pink plaster images and china vases to bronze dragons and Florentine mosaics, there is an endless variety of ornaments for domestic apartments. I've heard of a woman who was an ornament to her husband, and of a man who ornamented a whole town; but when you ask me to furnish you an ornamental style of finishing your house, I'm obliged to ask for particulars. You may have curious carvings in the woodwork about the doors and windows and on the base-boards; paint pictures, or set bright-colored tile, grotesque and classic, on the flat surfaces; cut a row of "scallops and points" around the edge of the casings in imitation of clam-shells, as I have sometimes seen; or you may build over your doors and windows enormous Grecian cornices supported by huge carved consoles,—regular shelves, too high for any earthly use except to remind you, by their vast store of dust, of your mortal origin and destiny. I hold it to be the duty of the amiable architect to carry out the wishes of his employer as far as consistent with his own peace of mind; and if you insist on having a row of brass buttons around all your casings, and setting your own tin-type, life-size, at every corner, I shall acquiesce; but my sober advice is that the interior work be simple and unobtrusive. The most perfect style in dress or manner is that which attracts the least attention; so the essential finish should not, by its elaborate design, challenge notice and thus detract from the furnishing and true ornamentation of the room. Avoid fine, unintelligible mouldings, needless crooks and quirks, and be not afraid of a flat surface terminating in a plain bead or quarter round. Stairways and mantels are not strictly a part of the essential structure, and may be treated more liberally. The doors, too, should be of richer design than the frames in which they are hung; while on the sideboard, bookcase, or other stationary furniture you may, figuratively speaking, spread yourself, always provided you do not make, in the operation, a greater display of ignorance than of sense.

Rich woodwork throughout, carved panels upon the walls, inlaid floors, and elaborate ceilings, each separate detail a work of art, intrinsically beautiful apart from its constructive use, would require a corresponding treatment in the setting of the doors and windows; but the most of what is commonly considered ornamental work, in such cases, is wholly incongruous with walls and ceilings of lath and plaster and floors of cheap boards. I know you will paste mouldy paper to the walls and spread dirty carpets on the floors (beg your pardon, I mean the paper will be mouldy before you know it, and if you ever saw a wool carpet that had been used a month without being, like Phoebe's blackberries, "all mixed with sand and dirt," your observation has been different from mine); perhaps "run" stucco cornices around the top of walls, and "criss-cross" the ceilings into a perfect flower-garden of parallelograms with round corners. But the inharmony remains all the same. Any great outlay of labor or material on the casings of doors and windows or the bases, when there is no other woodwork in the room, is surely out of place.

These are my sentiments, in general, upon the ornamental; of the merely fashionable you already know my opinion. Not that this most fitful dame has no rights that deserve respect, but her feeble light is a black spot in the radiance of real fine art. When you can give no other reason for liking what you like than that Mistress Fashion approves, beware! beware!—trust her not. The time will come when you will wish even the modest handmaiden Economy had blessed it. And if a thing is really beautiful, what difference whether it was introduced by Mrs. Shoddy last spring, or by Mrs. Noah, before her husband launched his fairy boat? Nor is fine art unattainable, even in the door-casings. It does not imply fine work. The size, shape, and position of the doors and windows, and the relative proportions of the work about them, is the first thing to be studied. Then have a care that such mouldings as may be needed are graceful, and you cannot go far wrong.

You propose to finish with "hard" wood, and ask my opinion. It depends: if it's the hardness you want, should recommend lignum-vitae and ebony; if the wood, economy would suggest that white-pine, and certain other softer sorts, be not overlooked. To answer according to the spirit of your inquiry, I should say, by all means (if you do not mind the cost) use wood instead of putty. With all respect for white paint and striped paint and all other kinds of paint, there is nothing more enduringly satisfying than the natural tint and grain of the different kinds of wood suitable for building, of which we have such great variety in style and color, from the overestimated black walnut, to the rarely used white-pine,—rarely used without having its natural beauty extinguished by three coats of paint. What I wish to say is, that finishing your woodwork without paint does not, necessarily, require the said wood to be of the kinds commonly called "hard." Any wood that is not specially disposed to warp, and that can be smoothly wrought, may be used. Those you mention are all good; so are half a dozen more,—the different kinds of ash, yellow-pine, butternut, white-wood, cherry, cedar, even hemlock and spruce in some situations. There are several important points to be religiously observed if you leave the wood, whatever the variety, in its unadorned beauty. It must be the best of its kind; it must be seasoned to its inmost fibre; it must be wrought skilfully, tenderly cared for, and, finally, filled and rubbed till it wears a surface that is not liable to soil, is easily cleaned, resists the action of moisture, and will grow richer with age. Hence, I say, by all means finish with unpainted wood, if you are not afraid of the expense, and yet paint and varnish are good, and putty, like charity, covereth a multitude of sins. Nothing protects wood better than oil and lead, and by means of them you have unlimited choice of colors, in the selection and arrangement of which there is room and need for genuine artistic taste. Yes; good honest paint is worthy the utmost respect. When it tries to improve upon nature's divine methods and calls itself "graining," it becomes unmitigated nonsense,—yes, and worse. It is one of the sure evidences of man's innate perversity that he persists in trying to copy certain beautiful lines and shadings in wood, not as an art study, but for actual use, when he may just as well have the perfect original as his own faulty imitation. What conceit, what blindness, what impudence, this reveals! What downright falsehood! Not in the painter,—O, no, skill is commendable even when unworthily employed,—but in him who orders it. You may buy a pine door, which is very well; pine doors are good; you tell every man that comes into your house it's black-walnut or oak or mahogany. If that isn't greeting him with lying lips and a deceitful heart, the moral law isn't as clear as it ought to be. You may think it's of no consequence, certainly not worth making a fuss about, but I tell you this spirit of sham that pervades our whole social structure, that more and more obtrudes itself in every department of life, comes from the bottomless pit, and will carry us all thither, unless we resist it, even in these milder manifestations, as we would resist the Father of Lies himself. Truth and falsehood are getting so hopelessly confused that we can scarcely distinguish one from the other.

One other suggestion in this connection. Without either painting or graining you may get a most satisfactory effect, both in looks and utility, by staining the less costly kinds of woods; using a transparent stain that will not conceal but strengthen the natural shading, and at the same time change its tint according to your fancy. This is an honest and economical expedient. It only requires that your lumber shall be sound, tolerably clear,—a good hard knot isn't alarming,—seasoned, and put up with care. The cost is less than common painting, and the effect as much better than graining as nature's work is more perfect than ours.

Don't ask me any more questions till I've disposed of these already on hand.



LETTER XXVIII.

From Fred.

THOUGHT PROVOKES INQUIRY.

MY DEAR ARCHITECT: In spite of your prohibition, I must pursue one or two of the inquiries already raised, in order to understand the answers given.

What is the objection to cheap floors, if they are always covered with carpets? Am I to understand that you do not approve of lath and plaster for walls and ceilings of first-class dwellings? If so, what would you substitute?

It seems much easier to say what to avoid than what to accept; but that, I believe, is the privilege of critics and reformers.

Why do you despise the modern fashions so heartily? Are the old any better?

Yours,

FRED.



LETTER XXIX.

From the Architect.

CONSISTENCY, COMFORT, AND CARPETS.

MY DEAR FRED: I don't despise the new fashions. I admire them—when they are good. Will you please try to understand that a thing of beauty is a joy forever? Whatever is born of truth, whether in art or religion, belongs to eternity; it never goes out of fashion. Will you also remember that modern styles, modes, fashions, inventions,—call them what you will,—are the mere average product of human thought and labor during a few years; the old that abides is drawn from the superlatively good of former countless generations, culled over and over again till that alone remains which has stood the test of your critics and reformers all along down from Adam, or up from the last monkey who wept to find his first-born without a tail and morally accountable.

Certainly it is easier to say what to avoid than what to accept, for there's more of it. Broad is the road of error, and the faults and follies, vices and sins, that wrangle and riot therein, are thicker than crickets on a sandy road in October,—thicker and blacker. You may catch them all day and there'll be just as many left. But the devoted followers of truth you may count on your fingers and carry them home in your bosom. Besides, the right thing to do cannot be told in detail for another, since every man must manifest his own individuality as he must work out his own salvation. In the millennium I expect we shall find no two houses built or furnished alike.

No; you are not to understand that lath and plaster are unfit for first-class dwellings, but there is no sense in trimming a gingham suit with point lace. A general uniformity of value in the material of which your castle is built is as essential as uniformity of style.

Yes; there is an objection to cheap floors, carpets or not; and now I've gone through your last lot of interrogation-points backward, which brings me where I left off in the former letter.

You propose to carpet the floors and ask to have them made to fit the carpets. Would you also like the walls to fit the paper-hangings, and the windows the curtains? Do you know what kind of carpets you will use in each room; just how long and how wide they will be to half an inch; the width of the borders; how much they will stretch in putting down; how much "take up" in the making (you see I can use interrogation-points)? Do you really know anything about them with certainty? I ask for information, as the same request is often made as to building the house to fit the carpets, and any attempt to comply with it seems to me a great waste of mathematics.

Concerning, the floors themselves,—leaving the yardstick out of the question,—even if they are covered by carpets six inches thick, it will not pay to lay poor ones. They should be double for solidity and warmth, well nailed for stiffness, seasoned for economy, and of good lumber for conscience' sake. Seasoned for economy, I say, since nothing is more destructive to carpets, especially to oil-cloth, than cracks in the floor underneath them. Yes,—one thing; the warped edges of the boards, that sometimes raise themselves,—that are almost sure to do so in spruce, which is never fit for floors, though often used. It's my conviction that spruce floor-boards, two inches thick and one and a half wide, would contrive to curl up at the edges. If you have good floors, furthermore, you will not feel obliged to cover them at all times and at all hazards. I remarked that the houses built when the good time coming comes will not be all alike. I can tell you another thing about them, though you may not believe it; there will be no wool carpets on the floors,—no, nor rag ones either. The people will walk upon planks of fir and boards of cedar, sycamore from the plains and algum-trees, gopher wood and Georgia pine, inlaid in forms of wondrous grace. There will be no moth or dust to corrupt and strangle, neither creaks nor cracks to annoy. It's a question among theologians whether the millennium will come "all at once and all o'er," or gradually. I think the millennial floors must be introduced gradually,—say around the edges,—for I do not suppose you or any one else in New England will give up the warm-feeling carpets altogether. And yet one who has seen a carpet of any sort taken and well shaken, after a six months' service, will hardly expect added health or comfort from its ministration. If your observation of this semiannual performance isn't sufficient, and you are curious to know how much noisome dirt and dust, how much woolly fibre and microscopic animal life, you respire,—how these poisonous particles fill your lungs with tubercles, your head with catarrh, and prepare your whole body for an untimely grave,—you can study medical books at your leisure. They will all tell the same story, and will justify my supposition that you will cover the floors with dirty carpets. Doubtless they will be shaken and "whipped" (they deserve it) two or three times a year, and swept, maybe, every day. The shaking is very well, but though it seems neater to sweep them, yet for actual cleanliness of the whole room, carpet and all, I suppose it would be better at the end of six months if they were swept—not once! For whatever can be removed from a carpet by ordinary sweeping is comparatively clean and harmless,—that which sinks out of sight and remains is unclean and poisonous.



There are two ways of lessening the evil without exterminating the cause. One is to shut the room, never using or opening it, except for the spring and fall cleaning; the other is to lay the carpet in such way that it may be taken up and relaid without demoralizing the entire household. Talk about the carpets fitting the rooms; there should be a margin of two feet—a few inches, more or less, is unimportant—at each side. Then if you have a handsome floor, the carpet becomes a large rug—no matter how elegant—that may be removed, cleansed, and put back again every morning if you like. You may fancy a border of wood either plain or ornamental, the surface of which shall be level with the top of the carpet. This is easily made, either by using thicker boards around the edges or by laying wood carpeting over the regular floor. One caution concerning fancy floors; don't make them too fanciful. We don't like to feel that we're treading under foot a rare work of art, and I've seen certain zigzag patterns which merely to look at fairly makes one stagger. Thresholds are on the floor, but not of them, nor of anything else, for that matter, and though somewhat useful in poetry, are often provoking stumbling-blocks in practice. Necessary at times, doubtless, but we have far too many and too much of them. Even where rooms are carpeted differently they are not needed. If you must have them, let them lie low and keep dark.



If you paint or paper the walls, as you will if they are plastered, keep this in mind: the trowel finishes them as far as use is concerned. Whatever is added is purely in the nature of ornament, and must be tried by the laws of decoration. If you enjoy seeing "a parrot, a poppy, and a shepherdess," bunches of blue roses, and impossible landscapes, spotted, at regular intervals, over the inner walls of the rooms, you will choose some large-figured paper. Perhaps, if the pattern is sufficiently distinct and gorgeous, you will think you need no other pictures; and the pictures themselves will be glad to be left out if they have any self-respect. I'm sure you don't enjoy any such thing. Some of the fancy paper-hangings are artistic and beautiful in design; for that very reason they ought not to be repeated. I would as soon hang up a few dozens of religious-newspaper prize-chromos. The general effect is the point to be considered. Why not have both? Because you can't. When you have a picture so pretty and complete as to attract your attention and fix itself in your memory, the general effect is lost if you discover the same thing staring at you whichever way you turn. 'T is the easiest thing in the world to have too much of a good thing. Sometimes the better the thing the worse the repetition. This general effect which we must have is well secured by a small, inconspicuous figure, or by those vine-like patterns, so delicate and wandering that you don't attempt to follow them. Better than either are the plain tints, which give you, in fact, all you require; a modification of the cold white wall, and the most effective background for pictures and other furnishing. As much ornament as you please in the border at the top, and at the bottom, too, if the rooms are high enough. All horizontal lines and subdivisions reduce the apparent height of the room. Indeed, you may use trimming without limit, either of paper or paint, wood and gilt moldings, provided they are well used. Color, after all, is the main thing. If there is any good reason for putting this upon paper and then sticking the paper to the wall, I've not learned it. It is cheaper, cleaner, and better to apply it directly to the plastering, either in oil or water-colors. Oil is the best; water the cheapest. In any case, the best quality of plastering is none too good. For the papering it may be left smooth, but for painting, especially with distemper, the rough coarse-grained surface is very much the best. The chief objection to stucco arises from its being a cheap material, easily wrought. It is so often introduced as if quantity would compensate for quality,—a common error in other things than stucco. Though often desirable and appropriate, as a general rule the more the worse. No amount of gilding will give it anything but a frail, often tawdry appearance, that does not improve, but deteriorates, with age.



Wainscoting is always in order; it is a question of harmony, when and where to use it. What you have in mind is really an extended and ornamented base. Of course, it enriches the room, but it begins a work to which there is no limit. It should be supplemented by a corresponding wood cornice at the top of the room, and between the two as much decorative woodwork as you can afford; until "the walls of the house within, the floor of the house, and the walls of the ceilings" are carved with "cherubims and palm-trees and open flowers." A costly wainscot at the base of the walls, with paper and stucco above, seems to me a great lack of harmony. I would spread my richness more evenly. In using different kinds of wood, the raised portions, being more exposed, may be of hard varieties, the sunken portions of softer materials, even lath and plaster, which may be frescoed, covered with some rich colored plain paper, or hung with violet velvet, according to your taste and means. The old-fashioned chair-rail seems to me a sensible institution It occupies the debatable ground between use and beauty, and may therefore be somewhat enriched. The plastering beneath it may be given a different tint from that above, and when the walls are high its effect is good. It is really carrying out the idea of panelling, to which there is hardly a limit in the way of variety.

Some of your questions have led me a little way from the building toward the furnishing, but I've tried to dispose of them categorically, and am now ready for another lot.



LETTER XXX.

From Miss Jane.

AUTOBIOGRAPHY AND ARCHITECTURE, POTATOES AND POSTSCRIPTS.

MR. ARCHITECT: Dear Sir,—After so long an indirect acquaintance through our mutual friends, it is quite time we were formally introduced. Allow me to present myself: Sister Jane, spinster; native of New England, born to idleness, bred to school-teaching; age not reported, temperament hopeful, abilities average; possessor of a moderate competence, partly acquired, mainly inherited; greatly overestimated by a friendly few, somewhat abused as peculiar (in American idiom "funny") by strangers; especially interested in the building of homes, and quite willing to help Mr. Fred carry out his ambitions in that direction by any suggestions I am able to make.



I've taught school, and I've taught music; sold goods in a store and worked in a factory; run a sewing-machine, travelled with subscription-books, and hired out to do house-work; and I solemnly aver that the only time I was conscious of genuine enthusiasm for my work, or felt that I was doing myself or others any actual good, was while keeping house. In school I was required to teach things I knew little and cared less about, and to punish the dear children for doing precisely what I would have done myself had I been in their places, losing all the while in amiability more than was gained in mental discipline. My experience in a factory was limited to three months. From working with the machines and as they worked, hardly using more intelligent volition than they, I began to fancy myself becoming like them, with no more rights to be respected, no more moral responsibility, and left without even serving my notice. Clerking I tried "just for fun." If all people who came to trade were like some, it would be the pleasantest, easiest work imaginable; if all were like others, the veriest torment. It was an excellent place to study human nature, but made me somewhat cynical. My sewing-machine had fits and gave me a back-ache, so I've locked it up until some one invents a motive-power that can be applied to house-work, washing, churning, mincing meat and vegetables, driving sewing-machines, and—if it only could—kneading bread, sweeping floors, washing dishes, ironing clothes, and making beds. My book agency was undertaken for the sake of travel,—of learning something, not only of the land we live in, but of its people and homes. If I had gone from house to house and with malice aforethought begged an outright gift of a sum equal to my commission on each book, I should have felt more self-approval than in asking people to buy what I had not the slightest reason to suppose they wanted.

Now I'm sure you are beginning to think me one of the disagreeably strong-minded, who think the whole world has gone astray when it's only themselves who are out of tune, but, truly, I'm not; only I don't like to be or to feel idle and useless, nor yet to be constantly striving to do from a sense of duty what is positively distasteful.

Like many other important discoveries, my aptness for house-work was found out by accident. Our next neighbor happened to be thrown, without a word of warning, into one of those dreadful whirlpools in regard to help, to which even the best regulated households are liable. My services, charitably volunteered as temporary relief, were gladly accepted, and the result on my part was two years of pleasant and profitable labor. All I earned was clear profit, and I had the satisfaction of knowing I saved the family many times over what was paid me. I'm converted beyond the possibility of backsliding to this truth: that there is no work so fit and pleasant, so profitable and improving, to the mass of womankind,—rich or poor, wise or unlearned, strong or weak,—yes, proud or meek,—as the care and control of a home; none so worthy of thorough study, none so full of opportunity for exercising all the better bodily and mental powers, from mere mechanical and muscular skill, up through philosophy and science, mathematics and invention, to poetry and fine art.

From potato-washing to architectural design the distance is great, yet there are possible steps, and easy ones too, leading from one to the other. I began with the potatoes and know all their tricks and their manners. The accompanying sketch is the nearest approach to architecture yet attained. A long way off, you will say; but I insist it is worthier of recognition than the plans of amateurs who begin with the parlor and leave the kitchen out in the cold. It is not for Mr. Fred; he must work out his own kitchen. If Mrs. Fred can't help him, more's the pity. I give my notions of general principles; the application of them I leave to you.

My kitchen is not merely a cook-room, nor yet the assembly and business room of the entire household, as in the olden time. It is the housekeeper's head-quarters, the mill to which all domestic grists are brought to be ground,—ground but not consumed. I should never learn to be heartily grateful for my daily bread if it must always be eaten with the baking-pans at my elbow. Indeed, we seldom enjoy to the utmost any good thing if the process of its manufacture has been carried on before our eyes. Hence the dining-room is a necessity, but it must be near at hand. If the kitchen cannot go to it, it must come to the kitchen. If this goes to the basement, or to the attic, that must follow, but always with impassable barriers between, protecting each one of our five senses. The confusion usually attending the dinner-hour should be out of sight; the hissing of buttered pans and the sound of rattling dishes we do not wish to hear; our sharpened appetites must not be dulled by spicy aromas that seem to settle on our tongues; we do not like, in summer weather, to be broiled in the same heat that roasts our beef; while, as for scents, wrath is cruel and anger is outrageous, but who is able to stand the smell of boiling cabbage? Yes; the kitchen must be separated from the dining-room, and the more perfect its appointments, the easier is this separation. The library and the sitting-room are completely divided by a mere curtain, because each is quiet and well disposed, not inclined to assert its own rights or invade those of others; but the ordinary kitchen, like ill-bred people, is constantly doing both. Thomas Beecher proposes to locate his at the top of the church steeple. That is unnecessary; we have only to elevate it morally and intellectually, make it orderly, scientific, philosophical, and the front parlor itself cannot ask a more amiable and interesting neighbor. As the chief workshop of the house, the kitchen should be fitted up and furnished precisely as an intelligent manufacturer would fit up his factory. Every possible convenience for doing what must be done; a machine for each kind of work and a place for every machine. Provision for the removal and utilizing of all waste, for economizing to the utmost all labor and material. Then if our housekeepers will go to school in earnest,—will learn their most complicated and responsible profession half as thoroughly as a mechanic learns a single and comparatively simple trade,—we shall have a domestic reformation that will bring back something of the Eden we have lost.

Respectfully yours,

SISTER JANE.

* * * * *

P.S.—Surreptitiously enclosed by Mrs. John.

DEAR MR. ARCHITECT: Jane has just read her letter to you aloud for John's and my benefit. John listened to the end without moving a muscle. When she wound up with the garden of Eden, he got up, took off his hat (he will keep it on in the house), made a fearfully low bow and said, "Perfectly magnificent, Jane! I begin to feel like old Adam, already." Then he burst out laughing and took himself out of the room, leaving the door wide open, of course, and kicking up the corner of the door-mat. You see he's one of those men who think home isn't home-like unless it's sort of free and easy. He'd be perfectly willing to eat and sleep and live in the kitchen,—if I had the work to do; and though he likes pretty things, and would feel dreadfully if I didn't look about so, has a perfect horror of smart housekeepers, and thinks women who care for nothing else the most disagreeable people in the world.

The trouble with Jane's letter is that she doesn't go into particulars enough, and that's why I want to add a postscript. I wish I could describe the kitchen in the house where she has been living. The people had so much confidence in her judgment, that they just allowed her to fix things as she chose, and it's really quite a study. It mightn't suit anybody else, but it shows what may be done.

She began by taking one of the pleasantest rooms in the house, although 'twas in the basement, and had windows cut to bring them on the south and east sides. Then she had an outside door at the south with a wide piazza over it, which made the room actually just so much larger. Across one side of the room is a wide stationary table,—I suppose men would call it a work-bench,—with a fall-leaf, in front of one of the windows, especially for an ironing-table. Of course it can be used for anything else. One part of it is about eight inches lower than the common height, where ever so many kinds of table-work can be done sitting. Underneath the higher part are drawers and places for all the things that are useful about the laundry-work. Her sink is in the midst of a perfect cabinet of conveniences. There's a hook or a shelf for every identical rag, stick, dish, or spoon that can be used or thought of; shelves at each side, and drawers that never by any possibility will hold what doesn't belong in them. One thing she won't have; and that's a cupboard under the sink for pots and kettles. She says it's impossible to keep such a place clean and sweet. Things are shoved into it sooty and steaming to get them out of the way, and it soon gets damp and crocky beyond all hope of purification. Hot and cold water run to the boilers and kettles, and there's a funny contrivance for sprinkling clothes. The washing almost does itself. The tubs are of soapstone, at the opposite side of the room from the ironing-table. Over the entire stove—she might have had a range, but didn't want one—there's a sort of movable cover with a flue running into the chimney that carries off every breath of steam and smoke from the cooking. One would never guess at the dinner by any stray odors. It is made of tin; the kettles boil quicker under it, and it makes the room a great deal cooler in summer by carrying the extra heat off up the chimney. She has a place for the bread to rise, and a cupboard close by for all the ironmongery belonging to the stove, zinc-cloth and blacking-brush included.



Her pantry I won't undertake to describe. It adjoins both dining-room and kitchen. John says she never does anything in getting dinner but just sit down in an easy-chair and turn a crank. That's one of John's stories, but she certainly will prepare a meal the quickest and with the fewest steps of any person I ever knew. The funniest thing about it is, that I've known eight people at work in the room all at once without being in each other's way one bit. But that's no closer than men work in their shops.

Jane intends to stay with us this winter, and I expect we shall have jolly times, for we're going to board the schoolmaster. If he calls to see you, as I think he will, I want you should read Jane's letter to him. She would take my head off if she knew I mentioned it, but I think he ought to know what's before him.

Respectfully,

MRS. JOHN.

P.S. No. 2.—Unnecessarily appended by John.

MY DEAR ARCHITECT: If we've got to go through the whole establishment on transcendental principles, I shall send in my resignation straight.

Sister Jane's a regular trump; Penelope and queen of Sheba rolled into one. But when the women-folks begin to preach, I always find it best to keep still and consider my sins. I haven't had a chance to say much lately, but I've kept up a tremendous thinking, and when I do get the floor look out for me. How do you happen to know so much about the millennium?

Yours patiently,

JOHN.



LETTER XXXI.

From the Architect.

DOMESTIC-SERVICE REFORM.

Dear Miss Jane: Your very kind letter was received and gratefully appreciated. As the world grows less ignorant and wicked, we should naturally expect missionaries and reformers to find their occupation going, if not quite gone; that modern reforms would be mere play compared with the stern and mighty movements that in former times have blessed mankind and balked the Evil One. But somehow the need for missionary work seems greater every year. We are not even permitted to go to the heathen. They come to us without waiting for an invitation; if not as pupils in the lessons of civilization, they come as teachers. Sometimes they are aliens, sometimes our own kith and kin. To keep what we have won and gain the next height requires new zeal, and ever greater efforts,—requires the very work you are doing; for a well-ordered home, though it consist of but two members, is a tremendous missionary society. The light streaming from its windows is an ever-burning beacon of safety to our most cherished social institutions.

First and chiefly, this essential home work needs to be taken from the hands of indifferent, careless servants and confided to those who realize the nobleness of the responsibility, and will strive to meet it faithfully. Ultimately, the ignorant, careless ones must be taught, but that will never be till culture is a manifest necessity and finds a fit reward. When a man undertakes the charge of a new business, he learns, not only its general principles, but as far as possible, its minutest details, otherwise he fails inevitably, and the place is given to his well-qualified competitor. If our prospective housekeepers were amenable to similar rules, the competent mistresses of this most useful art would find plenty of apprentices glad to serve them long and well for their tuition, and if those who have now the care of households will patiently instruct their help, they will find abundant recompense in a more faithful and efficient service.

Doubtless we must wait a little longer for our lost Eden to be restored by the angels of the household; but, in the hastening of that good time, such examples, permit me to say, as your own will be worth far more than any multiplying of conveniences and labor-saving machines for the benefit of those who do not know or care to learn how to use them,—examples of the nobleness, the gentility if you please, of all useful labor. Until that everlasting truth is understood and applied, there will be more need of your teaching than of my plans. If you will teach your neighbors what a fully equipped home building should contain, I will try to show them how their wants can be supplied. Teach them, at the same time, what it need not contain. As certain folks do not understand how heaven can be enjoyable without a Tartarean attachment to which all disagreeable people and performances are consigned, so a common notion of home, that earthly epitome of heaven, appears to be that it should also contain an abridgment of the same direful institution; that there must be somewhere in the house a place of torment, the angels who abide therein, giving us our daily bread and doughnuts, being of a totally different type from the glorious creatures singing songs of praise and operatic melodies in the upper stories. That the genius of the kitchen and the parlor can be one and the same is a conception too stupendous for the average understanding.

This, too, I hope you will insist upon. Every man who would build himself a house shall first sit down and—not count the cost, that comes into my department, but—ask himself solemnly what the house is for. To live in, of course. But living is a complex affair; it is constant growth or gradual death; there can be no standing still. Is the house to be an end, or a means; a help to make the life-work larger and better, or an added burden? Shall it lift, or crush him? When this solemn questioning is honestly done, we shall have a new order of domestic architecture. It may not be classic, neither Grecian nor Roman, Gothic nor French, but the best of all that has gone before and the last best thing thrown in. We shall have more cheap houses, more small ones, I think; more comfort and less show, more content and fewer mortgages.



LETTER XXXII.

From Fred.

GO TO; LET US BUILD A TOWER.

MY DEAR ARCHITECT: I've been hearing a variety of suggestions from Miss Jane, the substance of which she has already forwarded you in a letter. Her ideas are excellent. They ought to be adopted in every household. I wish to have them carried out as far as possible in mine, when the time comes. She favors a basement kitchen, which I had always thought objectionable. If adopted it would change my arrangement considerably. What do you think of it? How high shall I have the different stories, and will you give me some hints for exterior? I intended to have a tower or a cupola, but after so much change I hardly know where I am coming out. There is something very imposing about a tower, and a cupola seems to finish the house handsomely, besides affording fine views. I feel decidedly partial to French roofs, but have seen some very awkward ones that I should be sorry to imitate. They give excellent chambers and have a modern look. The latter point I suppose you will not think important.

Truly,

FRED.



LETTER XXXIII.

From the Architect.

BASEMENTS AND BALCONIES.

Dear Fred: Of course Miss Jane's ideas are good. When a woman honestly tries to understand her work and do it well, she is sure to succeed, especially in this matter of the equipments of home.

The basement arrangement depends mainly on the location. When this is favorable it is undoubtedly economical, nor is it necessarily inconvenient or unpleasant in any way, but quite the reverse. You are fortunate if your site will allow it, for it adds enormously to the capacity of the establishment. At least two sides of this lower story, "basement" you call it, should be above ground to insure dryness and plenty of light. Then all the heavier work of the house, including the eating and drinking, can be done on this floor, leaving the upper stories intact for loftier purposes. The old-fashioned cellar as a storehouse for a half-year's stock of provisions—bins, and barrels by the dozen, of potatoes, apples and cider, corned beef, pork, vegetables, vinegar, and apple-sauce—is extinct. Hence the space once thus occupied is almost a clear gain if made into finished apartments,—an economy that will commonly allow a family room on the next floor, whereby the going up and down stairs is no more serious than if both are one story higher. The sketch is an illustration of what the basement adds. The capacity of the little house is more than doubled by it, while in point of style the augmentation is even greater than in room.



As to height of stories, you are quite as liable to make them too high as too low. For rooms within the common limits of size, ten to eleven feet in the clear is enough. Even nine is by no means dangerous. If too high for their area, they seem like large closets, giving a feeling of being walled in, hardly less unpleasant than the low-hanging ceilings of the last century. I know the argument of better ventilation. But that depends. The old, seven-foot rooms, with their huge fireplaces, big enough to hold a load of wood, ox-team and all, undoubtedly held purer air than is found in the hermetically sealed apartments of the present time, whose ceilings are out of sight.

As you say, a tower is often very imposing. It is not always certain who feels the imposition most heavily, the man who pays for it or the man who looks at it. They are not only imposing, but they contain six or seven stories, one above another, of eight-foot square rooms, deducting a Jacob's-ladder stairway at one side, whereon people climb to the topmost room for the sake of looking out in the wrong direction through a round dormer-window, scratching their heads in the mean time on the nails that come through the roof! Cupolas too are lovely,—especially on a barn,—and top off a house in the daintiest fashion possible; just as, to set forth great things by small, the "knob" on the sugar-bowl cover finishes the sugar-bowl. Many houses do appear unfinished without a cupola, and I'm sorry for them, because when the cupola is built it looks so much like the handle on a big cover that I half expect some giant to come along and lift it off to take a peep at the curious animals underneath. For, truly, they are curious animals, and build some curious nests. I like, as well as you, to get up above my neighbors now and then, and look down upon them. I never see a tall chimney or church spire without wishing there was a spiral staircase around the outside of it, from which to view the landscape o'er. In fact, to be candid, if I had happened to live a few thousand years ago, I am afraid I should have taken stock in the Babel enterprise, not really expecting to leave this terrestrial ball in that way, but just to see how high we could go. The audacious tower of the Centennial I shall certainly patronize. But on domestic buildings, unless for better adaptation to the site, or for some special use, there are other things more to be desired than these lofty appendages. An open balcony, hanging from the highest point of the main roof, just below the scuttle, or the flat, if there is one, on the top of the whole, surrounded by a protecting balustrade, affords a better place for observation and costs less than those laborious affairs whose use and beauty often neutralize each other.



How dare you think anything claiming to be a French roof ugly to look at? People who are fond of that style admire them from a sense of duty, because they are French roofs. Perhaps if I was a Frenchman I should like French roofs, too; being an American, I like American roofs better. You do, however, give one reason for your preference,—the complete chambers,—which is merely another way of saying you like three stories better than two,—a good argument, by the way, for the basement, which is surely more convenient than an attic. I enclose a sketch, intimating an outline and style that will suit your location. The roof, which is not French, either in form or costliness, will contain all the dormitories and store-rooms you can use, unless you propose keeping a three-story boarding-house.



LETTER XXXIV.

From the Schoolmaster.

FOUR ROOMS ENOUGH.

MR. ARCHITECT: Dear Sir,—Once, in conversation with you, I made some inquiries as to the feasibility of building houses, especially of brick, with reference to future enlargement. My present ambition is bounded by a house of four rooms. One in which all the household work shall be done, including the eating. It shall contain the cooking-stove, the dining-table, laundry conveniences, etc., and may be called kitchen, dining-room, laboratory, or simply work-room. An apartment to be used solely on account of its facilities for doing house-work. It should be of good size, and a pleasant outlook is desirable, but not necessary. A second room for ordinary and extraordinary use; to sit in, to talk in, to read and write and visit in; the books are kept in it, and the sewing-machine, the piano and the flower-stand, the birdcage and the pictures; a large, pleasant room, where the sunlight loves to shine in upon us and we love to look out upon the sunshine. It is parlor, library, drawing-room, living room; in fact, it is the house itself, to which everything else is accessory. A family sleeping-room, sunny, simple, and airy, and a guest-room of similar character, complete the establishment. More than these four principal rooms would be a burden, less would hardly suffice for comfortable living. The problem is to arrange a plan that shall be convenient and complete before it begins to grow, and to which future additions may be made without serious loss. I also want counsel concerning ventilation, both on general principles and with reference to the unfortunate box in which I am daily compelled to breathe my own breath over and over, variously flavored with the commingled exhalations of sixty pupils, with whom I grow cross, restless, or stupid, according to the state of the school-room atmosphere. I believe it is just as wicked to allow children to breathe impure air in their school-rooms or their bedrooms as it would be to put poison in their dinner-pails and require them to swallow it.

My friend, Mrs. John, takes a kindly interest in my quadruple plan, and assures me it will be quite sufficient for a sensible housekeeper. Do you suppose such a one can be found?

If convenient, I will call upon you in a few days.

Truly yours,

SCHOOLMASTER.



LETTER XXXV.

From Mrs. John.

CONVENIENCES AND CONJECTURES.

Dear Mr. Architect: The building-fever seems to be contagious in our neighborhood. The teacher who boards with us is the latest subject. He pretends it's all for fun, but has been studying plans for weeks, and now, after getting the advice of the entire household, is going to throw it all away and apply to you, as he should have done in the first place. I overheard him explaining to Jane how the cooking-stove is to be in a sort of recess by the chimney, with tin-lined doors to shut it out of sight; the wash-boiler at the opposite side, enclosed in the same way, and having a contrivance overhead to carry off the steam; how there are to be cupboards at each side of the wide window, making it a sort of bay, with a wood-box window-seat; how the sink is to be converted into an elegant sideboard by an ornamental cover, and everything else in the room contrived so it can be shut up or folded up out of sight when not in use. Of course Jane assists, and the combined wisdom of the two is something appalling to ordinary mortals. I should certainly think the affair was getting serious if anything of the kind ever did turn out as other folks think it ought. They are wonderfully harmonious now, but I don't believe Jane will ever be satisfied without a separate dining-room.



John wishes me to ask what he shall do about warming his house. Says he has not decided whether to have fireplaces or stoves, grates or a hot-air furnace, steam, hot water, solar heat, or depend on a scolding wife to keep things warm.

Yours truly,

MRS. JOHN.



LETTER XXXVI.

From the Architect.

THE LESSON OF THE ICE-HOUSE.

MRS. JOHN: Dear Madam,—Without doubt the affair is getting serious, but do not give yourself any uneasiness as to the issue. The Divinity that shapes our matrimonial ends is, happily, a wiser power than that which designs our houses, however it may appear to outsiders. Your friend talks like a gentleman and a scholar. I admonished him discreetly, promised to study his interesting problem and give him a chapter on ventilation; which, by the way, is so intimately connected with warming, that I may be obliged to make a sort of company letter in answering your husband's inquiry on that subject. Tell him, in brief, to use fireplaces if he has a hundred acres of wood-land to clear up; stoves, if he can live without air; grates, if he doesn't mind the trouble and the ashes; furnace, if he can set it directly under each room and can find one that won't strangle him some windy night with poison gases; and steam or hot water, if he can run a machine-shop and keep a competent engineer. Solar heat may be more available than he thinks, but his doubt as to the last-named mode proves that he has no experimental knowledge of it. Neither have I.

Tell him also to protect his family as carefully as he protects his ice, and the house-warming will be a simple matter. The conditions are identical, only turned inside out. In one case the heat is to be kept from penetrating, in the other from escaping, and both require the same treatment; not, perhaps, to the extent of stuffing with sawdust,—confined air is just as good,—but the walls and the floors, the roofs and the windows, should be made to prevent the escape of heat. He may think I underrate his scientific attainments, but it will do no harm to remind him that an air-tight house may be a very cold one. A man would freeze to death in a glass bottle, when a coarse, porous blanket would keep him comfortable. Double windows are not to keep cold air out, but to keep the heat in. India-rubber weather-strips have, doubtless, caused ten times as many influenzas as they have prevented. More heat will radiate through a window of single glass than would be carried out by the air through a crack, half an inch wide, at the side of it.

These suggestions are "just to set him a thinking."



LETTER XXXVII.

From John.

SHINGLES, SUNSHINE, AND FRESH AIR.

MY DEAR ARCHITECT: When I stepped into the background, I didn't propose to be left entirely out in the cold. I've followed Fred through the most of his gropings after grandeur, and listened patiently to one of Jane's dignified essays on the sublimity of housekeeping; but when my wife begins romancing, and the schoolmaster is allowed to run wild, as though his moonshine was brighter than that of other folks, I think it's time to call the meeting to order.

While you have been gossiping I have been at work, and now our house is almost done,—that is to say, it's well begun. The stone walls of the first story are finished, the frame is raised and covered. I've done one thing without asking anybody's advice; covered the roof with the best cedar shingles I could find. I hired an honest man to lay them, who would throw out all that were dubious and lay the cross-grained ones right side up, and painted the tin valleys both sides before the shingles were laid. Then I took the difference in cost between this and a good slate roof and put it in the savings-bank. At the end of twenty years, if my roof lasts as long, my deposit will put on the best kind of a slate roof and leave three hundred dollars to go to the Society for the Promotion of Fine Art in General and Rural Architecture in Particular. I know the shingled roof may burn me up, if the chimney should happen to take fire some windy night, but 't won't cost so much for repairs as slate if they should blow over, either all at once, or one brick at a time. My neighbors may not like the looks, especially while it's new; but if we have nothing uglier than a mellow gray-shingled roof, I don't think anybody'll be hurt. I wish we had something like the tile roofs I've seen in foreign pictures. They'd go first-rate with my stone walls.

The eave-spouts bother me. I don't need to save the water from the roof, and have concluded to let it pour where it pleases. The porches protect the doorsteps, and I think it will be easier to take care of it after it falls than to hang gutters all around emptying at the corners and angles. They are troublesome things anyway. The leaves clog them, the ice dams them, the snow comes down in an avalanche and smashes them, they fall to leaking and spoil the cornice, and after they are all done there's no certainty that the water won't run the wrong way. I can put them up afterwards if necessary, but don't believe it will be.

The last counsel you gave me was to open the eyes of my house for the daylight to shine through without let or hindrance. I'm beyond advice on that subject. Carpets and curtains shall fade rather than wife and babies. My windows yawn like barn-doors. There isn't a room in the house that won't have the sun a part of the day, and he looks into the sitting-room from the moment his cloudy bedclothes are thrown off in the morning, till he hides his face behind Mount Tom at night. My glass bill will count up, but I'd rather pay for glass in windows than for iron in the shape of tonics.

Now, if you will settle the question of warming and ventilating you shall be honorably discharged. Don't try to show off your science by telling me how carbon, the wicked, poison stuff, is heavy, and we must leave a hole near the floor where it can run out and be coaxed up to the ridgepole after it gets cold, and then make pictures covered with arrow-heads to show how well-educated air ought to go! Talk as many gases as you please to other folks. I know two or three things for certain. Coal costs ten dollars a ton; that's one. I want just as large a house in winter as in summer; that's another. I mean the whole house must be comfortable, in shape to use when needed. I know a man will be cut off suddenly by his own breath if he has nothing else for his lungs. Mixing fresh air with it will prolong his career more or less, but it's only a question of time when he shall give up the ghost if he attempts to subsist on anything less simple and pure in the way of respiration than the out-door atmosphere. That's bad enough in some places. What I don't know and want you to tell me, is how to keep cool in summer, warm in winter, and at the same time have all the fresh air we can possibly consume. I know how to keep warm: build a tight room, keep it shut up, set a box stove in the middle of it, and blaze away. A ton of anthracite or a cord of hickory will keep you warm all winter, especially if you die before spring, as you probably will. I know how to have fresh air too: open the windows and let it blow; but unless a man lives down in a coalmine he can't well afford to keep warm under such circumstances.

I believe this question is the chief concern of builders here below, and whoever invents an economical solution of it will not only make a fortune, but he'll deserve one. Why don't you go for it?

Yours, JOHN



LETTER XXXVIII.

From the Architect.

WHEN THE DOCTORS DIFFER.

DEAR JOHN: Your economical reasons for using shingles would justify cheap jewelry and rag carpets. Try to be consistent. I should object to slate on a log-barn or shingles on a stone-house. I hope you furnished your honest carpenter with a stout jack-knife, and required him not only to lay the shingles right side up, but to lay the upper ends close together, leaving them apart at the butt. Gutters are troublesome truly, but often indispensable; there is no resource but to have them thoroughly made. Poor ones are worse than none. Those that hang independently of the cornice are safest for cheaper buildings, but should be treated as an essential feature; that is, you should not complete the cornice without a gutter and afterwards disfigure it by a sloping spout having no apparent kinship to the rest of the finish.

The problem of warming and ventilating is easily solved for those who desire its solution sufficiently to make the necessary appropriations. One quarter of what is commonly spent for vanity and deceit will be ample. Most men and women, at least the unthinking, prefer fashionable show rather than health! A fearful statement, but sadly true. There is doubtless more danger from impure air than from cold. Our senses warn us quickly of the latter; the prompting of knowledge is needed to guard us against the former,—of a practical knowledge unfortunately rare. Men, women, and children are dying daily through ignorance and indifference on this subject. There is hardly a school-house to be found in which the murder of the innocents is not continually rehearsed, hardly a church in which the spiritual elevation resulting from attendance therein is not counterbalanced by an equal physical depression, and rarely a hall or lecture-room wherein an audience can even listen to a physiological discourse on the fatal effects of impure air without experimentally knowing that they are listening to solemn truth; while as to the dwelling-houses, the homes of the dear people, it requires no bloodhound's scent to distinguish them one from another! The moment the front door is opened to me, I am assailed by the odor peculiar to the establishment. It may be tuberoses or garlic, mould or varnish, whitewash, gas, lamp-smoke, or new carpets, a definite and describable or an indefinite and indescribable fragrance, but it is sure to be something besides pure fresh air.



Let me give you first a suggestion for summer ventilation. Did you ever shingle the south side of a barn on a calm, hot, sunny day in July, thermometer at ninety degrees in the shade? Did you ever lay your hand on a black slate or tin roof exposed to the direct rays of a midsummer sun? Have you ever, at the close of some hot, labor-spent day in August, sat out of doors until the evening air became deliciously cool, and then climbed to your attic dormitory, there to spend a sleepless night in perspiration and despair, anathematizing the man who built and the fate which compelled you to occupy such a chamber of torment?

Now, there is no good reason why the rooms immediately under the roof of a house should be any more uncomfortable on account of heat than those of the first story. Nay, more, by the simplest application of common-sense, these upper rooms may be so coolly ventilated that the hotter the sun pours his rays upon the roof the more salubrious shall be your palace in the sky. And this I call a triumph of genius, making the seemingly destructive wrath of the elements to serve and save us.

M. Figuier tells us with just how many hundred thousand horse-power the sun, by the caloric of its beams, operates upon the surface of the earth. I cannot tell precisely how much force is spent upon the roofs of the houses that cover so much of the good mother's bosom in certain localities, but I know that it is wonderfully great, and that rightly controlled it will make the space immediately under these roofs cool instead of hot.

And this is the way to cause the heat of a burning sun to cool the attic chamber: Make the space between the rafters on the sunny sides of your building as smooth and unobstructed as possible. Arrange openings into the outer air at the lower end of each, simple or complex, according to your taste and ability. Provide also means for closing the same in cold weather. Be sure that these spaces, or flues, are enclosed either by lath and plaster, or by smooth boards, quite to the highest part of the roof, whether your rooms are finished to the top or not,—and provided with an abundant outlet at the top. This may also be as simple as the dorsal breathing-holes of a tobacco barn, gorgeously imposing as an Oriental pinnacle, or it may be a part of the chimney; only let it be at the very summit, ample, and so arranged that an adverse wind shall not prevent the egress of the rising currents of air. Mind this, too; it is by no means the same thing to let these flues open into a loft over the attic rooms, with windows in gables or other outlet.

Now, do you not see that as soon as the sun has warmed the flues, there will be a stiff breeze blowing, not over the roof, but really between the roof and the house, and the hotter the sun the stiffer the breeze; in the words of one who has tried it,—"a perfect hurricane." That is, the lath and plaster, or sheathing, which forms the inner roof, is shaded by a canopy of slate, shingles, or tin, and fanned by a constant breeze as cool at least as the outer air. But we can do vastly better than that. Instead of opening the lower ends of these flues to the outer air, they may be extended wherever the needs of the house require, or its construction will allow.

Let me remind you, under the head of general principles, that there is no such thing as "suction." Of course, you know it when you stop to think, but bear it in mind, and wherever the motive-power seems to be applied on which you rely to lift the column of air, remember that if raised at all it must be raised from the bottom. Maybe you will discover room for a moral here.

This summer ventilation is simple enough, and relates rather to comfort than to health. The great question in building, for New England and similar climates, is, indeed, how to keep our houses warm, and, without great expenditure of fuel, have a constant change of air. As you suggest, we have learned that wood costs eight or ten dollars a cord instead of the mere labor of cutting and hauling; hence we have shut the mouths of the old-time fireplaces, mouths that it would cost a fortune to feed. We find the value of building-timber increasing every year; so we make thinner walls, lined outside and inside with paper, and have cold houses, no fresh air, anthracite coal, and disease. Our grandfathers carried foot-stoves to church, where they sat and shivered, sometimes with the cold, sometimes at the doctrines. We have warm air and stale. Let us hope our children will have warmth and freshness for body and soul. They, in their homes, had big fireplaces, loose doors, rattling windows, cracks in the walls, and as they lay in bed looked at the stars through the chinks in the roof, or felt the snow blow on their cheeks which were ruddy with health and vigor. We have cylinder stoves, double windows, tight walls plastered and papered, and pale faces.



Yet we build and furnish more wisely than our ancestors. They ventilated because they couldn't help it, couldn't afford to build as we do, and could afford to burn an acre of woodland every year.

It is no light task you have set me preliminary to an honorable discharge. Next to theology and government finance there is no subject on which the doctors differ and dogmatize as in this matter of warming and ventilating, most of them preferring that the universe should suffocate rather than their pet theories and furnaces be found wanting. (I'm not speaking of the theologians.)

Let me restate a few general principles, simple and obvious, yet so important that we must not risk forgetting them. Air runs away with heat fast enough if allowed to move. Confined it is a more effectual barrier than granite walls and plates of steel. Hence the spaces in the wall should not extend its whole height unless for local ventilation. Cut them off surely at each floor, and as much oftener as you please; also make the floors tight and warm. Deafen with mortar if you can afford it, and do not allow the open spaces between the floor-timbers to extend unbroken through the house, or fail to close them between the rafters when the ceiling of the highest story is above the plates. If you wish to warm the entire house, it will be good economy to lath and plaster along the under side of the rafters quite to the ridgepole. Finally put on your double windows, and you are ready for winter quarters.

In theory, the house being once warmed, the temperature within should scarcely change, even if the fire goes out. Practically, the walls cannot hold this subtile caloric, however scientifically they are padded. There will be crevices, too, though the prince of joiners builds your house, through which the warm air will escape. But replenishing this inevitable loss would be a small matter, if the breath of life were a needless luxury. Unless, however, we are willing to suck poison into our veins with every breath we draw, slow but sure,—poison expired from our lungs and emanating from our bodies, poisonous gases liberated by the combustion of fuel, poison dust and decay from the waste of inorganic material,—we must have a never-ceasing supply of fresh air around us everywhere and always. Now this incoming fluid, cold as ice, eats fuel like a hungry giant, yet we must receive it with open arms, and, as soon as fairly warmed, send it off through the ventilating flue, bearing whatever noxious elements may chance to be afloat, and, of course, much of the warmth we love and buy so dearly. We have then to supply these three sources of loss. Obviously for economy the two former must be prevented to the utmost, the latter rigidly controlled.

Thus far, except the old fogies who don't believe in ventilation, we can all travel together harmoniously. Now our way divides, the doctors begin to differ, and the patients begin to die.

The first fork is at the two modes of warming, direct and indirect. The former includes stoves of all sorts,—sheet or cast iron, porcelain, soapstone, brick or pottery, box or cylinder, for wood or coal, air-tight, Franklin, "cannon," or base-burner, parlor cook or kitchen cook, charcoal basin, warming-pan or foot-stove,—anything in which you can build a fire. It includes open grates and fireplaces, ancient or modern, large or small; it includes steam-pipes, hot-water pipes, and stove-pipes; and last, but not least, steam-radiators, than which it has never entered into the heart of man to conceive anything more surprising and unaccountable,—flat, pin-cushiony things, big as a bedquilt, dangerous-looking hedgehoggy affairs, some huge and bungling, others frail and leaky, but radiators still. In brief, the heating apparatus, whatever it may be, stands in the room to be warmed.

By the indirect mode it is enclosed in a chamber more or less remote, commonly called a furnace, and made of brick, sheet-iron, or wood lined with tin. Into this chamber cold air is admitted from some source, and escapes by its own levity, usually through tin pipes, to the rooms where the heat is needed. Sometimes it is driven out by mechanical means.

The advocates of the latter indirect mode claim for it many advantages. It is apparently clean. There are no ashes to be taken up, no hearths to sweep, no andirons to polish, no stoves to black. One fire will warm the entire house if well arranged, and, for a trump card, there may be a supply of fresh air straight from the north pole, but agreeably warmed, constantly entering the room.

The objections are less numerous but more weighty. The liability to imperfect construction and careless management often makes a furnace, especially a cast-iron one, a savor of death unto death rather than of health and comfort; also, when we are warmed by air thrown into a room at a high temperature, and dry at that, a greater degree of heat is necessary for comfort than if our bodies and clothing absorb heat from a radiating surface. The furnace, in short, compels us to breathe an atmosphere highly rarefied. We have the most careful and competent authority for believing this to be gravely injurious.