"It must be of bricks, wood and stone, separately and in combination; it must be Queen Anne, Gothic, French, Japanesque and classic American, and it must be painted all the colors of an autumn landscape."
"Well, there's one comfort," said Jack; "you haven't paid for this advice, so you won't be obliged to take it in order to save it."
"I should think not, indeed, but that isn't the trouble. These letters are from my special friends, wise, practical people, who know everything about building and housekeeping, and they speak from solemn conviction based on personal experience."
"Moral: When the doctors differ, do as you please."
Three of the letters, reserved for the last on account of their unusual bulk, contained actual plans. One was from an old school friend who had married an architect and couldn't afford to send a wedding present, but offered the plans as a sort of apology, privately feeling that they would be the most valuable of all the gifts; the second was from a married brother in Kansas who had just built himself a new house, and thought his sister could not do better than use the same plans, which he had "borrowed" from his architect; and the third was from Aunt Melville, who was supposed (by herself) to hold the family destiny in the hollow of her hand.
"For once," she wrote, "your father has done a most sensible thing. Every girl ought to have a present of a new house on her wedding-day. You were very silly to make such a fuss about the house that Jack built, for it is a very stylish-looking house, even if it isn't quite so convenient inside; but of course you can improve upon it, and fortunately I can contribute just what you need—the plans of the house that your Uncle Melville built for George last year. It isn't as large as it ought to be, but it will suit you and Jack admirably. You must tell me how much you have to spend. This house can be very prettily built for eight or ten thousand dollars, and if you haven't as much as that you must ask for more. The hall is decidedly stylish, and, with the library at one side and drawing-room at the other, you will have just room enough for your little social parties. The room behind the drawing-room Jack needs for his private use, his study, office, smoking-room or whatever he calls it—a place to keep his gun, his top-boots, his fishing-rod and his horrid pipes; where he can revel to his heart's content in the hideous disorder of a 'man's room,' pile as much rubbish as he likes on the table, lock the doors and defy the rest of the household on house-cleaning days. The dining-room is good and the kitchen arrangements are perfect. George's wife has changed servants but three times since they began housekeeping, nearly a year ago, which certainly proves that there is every possible convenience for doing work easily. The outside of the house is not wholly satisfactory. There should be a tower, and you must put one on somewhere."
Then followed several pages of advice about furnishings and a postscript announced that Colonel Livingston was charmed with the house and would probably build one like it for Clara. The charm of Aunt Melville's advice lay in its abundant variety. It was new every morning and fresh every evening. The latest thing was always the best. The plans of to-morrow were certain to be better than those of yesterday.
Jill therefore made a careful study of the first installment, not doubting that others of superior merit would be forthcoming. She found many things to approve. The hall promised comfort and good cheer, whether stylish or not. The vista across through the parlor bay and the wide library window would give a pleasant freedom and breadth. The stairs were well placed, the second landing with its window of stained glass being especially attractive, whether as a point of observation or as a cosy retreat, itself partly visible from the hall below. Every chamber had a closet of its own, not to mention several extra ones, and there was a place for every bed.
"As for your sanctum, Jack, I don't at all approve. It will be hard enough, I've no doubt, to keep you from lapsing into barbarism, and I shall never allow you to set up a den, a regular Bluebeard's room, all by yourself. I promise never to put your table in order, but I wouldn't trust the best of men with the care of a closet or a bureau-drawer for a single week, much less of an entire room with two closets, a case of drawers, a cupboard and a chimney-piece. But the chief fault of the plan is that it doesn't happen to suit our lot. The entrances are not right, the outlooks are not right, the chimneys are not right."
"Turn it around."
"And spoil it? No; I learned a second lesson on our journey, and it was well worth what it cost. We shall never find a plan made for somebody else that will suit us."
"Not good enough?"
"It isn't a question of goodness—it's a question of fitness. Neither Cousin George's, nor any other house I ever saw, is precisely what we need."
"Moral: Draw your own plans."
"We must, and we'll begin to-morrow."
"Why not this evening?"
"We couldn't see."
"Light the gas."
"Oh, but we must make the plans out of doors on the lot. We shall then know where every room will be, every door and especially every window. We must fix the centre of the sitting-room in the most commanding situation, and be certain that the dining-room windows do not look straight into somebody's wood-shed. Then, if there are any views of blue hills and forests far away over the river, I shall be uncomfortable if we do not get the full benefit of them."
"Don't you expect to have anything interesting inside the house?"
"Except my husband? Oh yes! but it would be a wicked waste of opportunities not to accept the blessings provided for us without money and without price, which only require us to stand in the right places and open our hearts and windows to receive them."
Jill's second lesson was indeed worth learning, even if it cost a wedding journey. Every house must suit its own ground and fit its own household, otherwise it can neither be comfortable nor beautiful.
The next morning, armed with a bundle of laths, sharpened at one end, and equipped with paper, pencil and tape-line, the prospective house-builders proceeded to lay out, not the house but the plan. They planted doors, windows, fireplaces and closets, stoves, lounges, easy-chairs and bedsteads, as if they were so many seeds that would grow up beside the laths on which their respective names were written and bear fruit each according to its kind. Later in the day a high step-ladder was introduced, from the top of which Jill scanned the surrounding country, while Jack stood ready to catch her if she fell. The neighbors were intensely interested, and their curiosity was mixed with indignation when, toward night, a man was discovered cutting down two of the rock-maple trees that Jill's grandfather planted more than fifty years before, and which stood entirely beyond any possible location of the new house.
"This evening, Jack, you must write for the architect to come."
"I thought you were going to make your own plans."
"I have made them, or rather I have laid them out on the ground and in the air. I know what I want and how I want it. Now we must have every particular set down in black and white."
Jack wrote accordingly. The architect was too busy to respond at once in person, but sent a letter referring to certain principles that reach somewhat below the lowest foundation-stones and above the tops of the tallest chimneys.
"You are quite right," the architect wrote, "to fix the plan of your house on the lot before it is made on paper, provided first the lot is a good one. Nothing shows the innate perversity of mankind more forcibly than the average character of the sites chosen for human habitations in cities, in villages and in the open country. Or does it rather indicate the instinctive struggle for supremacy over nature? The 'dear old nurse' is most peaceably inclined toward us, yet we shall never be satisfied till all the valleys are exalted and the hills laid low. Not because we object to hills and valleys—quite the contrary; but we must show our strength and daring. Nobody wants the North Pole, but we are furious to have a breach made in the wall that surrounds it. If we discover a mighty primeval forest we straightway grind our axes to cut it down; an open prairie we plant with trees. When we find ourselves in an unclean, malarious bog, instead of taking the short cut out, shaking the mud from our feet and keeping clear of it forever after, we plunge in deeper still and swear by all the bones of our ancestors that we will not only walk through it dry-shod, but will build our homes in the midst of it and keep them clean and sweet and dry. The good mother beckons to us with her sunshine and whispers with her fragrant breezes that on the other side of the river or across the bay the land is high and dry, that just beyond the bluffs are the sunny slopes where she expected us to build our houses, and, like saucy children as we are, we say that is the very reason we prefer to go somewhere else.
"Now, if the particular spot of earth on which you expect to set up the temple of your home is not well adapted to that sacred purpose, think a bit before you commence digging. If it is low, wet and difficult of drainage; if the surface water or the drains from adjacent lands have no outlet except across it; if its size and shape compel your house to stand so near your neighbor on the south that he takes all the sunshine and gives you the odors of his dinner and the conversation of his cook in exchange; if there are no pleasant outlooks; if it is shaded by trees owned by somebody who will not be persuaded to cut them down for love nor money—by all means turn it into a fish-pond, a sheep-pasture or a public park. You can never build upon it a satisfactory home. Perhaps it is within five minutes' walk of the post-office and on the same street with Mrs. Adoniram Brown, and these considerations outweigh all others. In that case there is no help for you. You must make the best of it as it is.
"If you have a suspicion that the ground is naturally wet, that it contains hidden springs or conceals an impervious basin, making in effect a pool of standing water underground, the first necessity is a clean outlet—not a sewer—low enough to underdrain the lot at least a foot and a-half below the bottom of the cellar. Having found the clean outlet, lay small drain tiles, two or three inches in diameter, under the entire house and for several feet all around it, like a big gridiron. When this is buried under one or two feet of clean gravel or sand you will have a permanently dry plot of ground to build upon. The same treatment will be effective if the ground is "springy." But there must be a "cut-off" encircling the house. This you can make by digging a trench a foot wide, reaching down to the drain tiles, and filling it nearly to the top with loose stones or coarse gravel, the surface of the ground being graded to slope sharply toward the trench. The surface water between it and the house, and any moisture creeping toward the house from without, will then be caught in this porous trap and fall to the gridiron.
"It is possible, theoretically, to build an underground cellar so tight that it may be lifted up on posts and used for a water-tank, or set afloat like a compartment-built iron steamer. Such walls may be necessary under certain circumstances. They may be necessary for cellars that are founded in swamps, in salt marshes below the level of the sea, and in old river-beds, where the original iniquity of the standing water is made still more iniquitous by the inevitable foulness of the washing from streets and the unclean refuse from sinks and back doors. But for buildings that have four independent walls, with room enough for a man to ride around his own house in a wheelbarrow without trespassing on his neighbors, and which are not hopelessly depressed below all their surroundings, it is better to use a little moral suasion on the land itself than to spend one's resources in a defiant water-proof construction. Instead of drain tiles, small stones covered with a thin layer of hay or straw before being buried in the sand may be used if more economical.
"If you cannot find the clean outlet for these buried drains or tiles below the level of the cellar bottom, then raise the cellar, house and all. No matter if you are accused of having a 'stuck up' house—better be stuck up than stuck in the mud. Raise it till the entire cellar is well above the level of thorough drainage. If this happens to carry it above the surface of the ground, set the house on posts and hang the cellar under the floor like a work-bag under a table or the basket to a balloon.
"The foundation walls must indeed touch solid bottom and extend below the action of frost; but if the wall above the gridiron and below the paving of the cellar is of hard stones, or very hard bricks laid in cement, there will be little risk from rising moisture.
"After all, the chief danger is not from underground springs, from clean surface water or an occasional rising of the floods, but from the unclean wastes that in our present half-civilized state are constantly going out of our homes to poison and pollute the earth and air around them."
"Half-civilized indeed!" said Jack, interrupting the reading of the letter. "Besides, he is premature as well as impertinent. He doesn't know but the house will stand on a granite boulder."
"I suppose he intends to warn us, and I am not certain that our lot is as dry as it ought to be. At all events we will have some holes dug in different places and see if any water comes into them."
"Of course it will. Haven't we just had the 'equinoctial'? The ground is full of water everywhere."
"If it is full this spring it will be full every spring. We may as well order the drain tiles."
"It shall be done," said Jack. "Now let us have the second proviso. I hope it will be shorter than the first."
"And, secondly," Jill continued reading, "provided you know what your house is for. It is my conviction that of all the people who carefully plan and laboriously build themselves houses, scarcely one in ten could give a radical, intelligent reason for building them. To live in, of course; but how to live is the question, and why. As they have been in the habit of living? As their neighbors live? As they would like to live? As they ought to live? Is domestic comfort and well-being the chief motive? It is not, usually; hence, there are in the world a great many more houses than homes."
"Oh, bother the preaching! It's all true, but we don't happen to need it. When is he coming?"
"Next week, and he hopes we shall have 'some general idea of what we want.' How very condescending! We know precisely what we want, as I can easily show him."
Jill accordingly produced a fresh sheet of "cross-section" paper, on whose double plaid lines the most helpless tyro in drawing can make a plan with mathematical accuracy provided he can count ten, and on this began to draw the plan of the first floor, expounding as she drew.
"If we call the side of the house which is next the street the front, the main entrance must be at the east side, because we need the whole of the south side for our living rooms. You know the view toward the southwest is the finest we shall have, especially from the chambers."
"How do I know? I didn't climb the step-ladder."
"And we must have a large bay window directly on that corner. The hall must run through the house crosswise, with the stairs on the west side of the house. As there is nothing to be seen in this direction except the white walls and green blinds of the parsonage, the windows on the stair-landing shall have stained glass. The dining-room will be at the north side of the hall, with plenty of eastern windows, and behind that the kitchen with windows at opposite sides. But you wouldn't understand the beauty of my kitchen arrangements now. By-and-by, when you are wiser, I will explain them. Do you like a fireplace in the hall, Jack?"
"I don't know as I do. Do you?"
"Of course! certainly."
"I shall be of all men most miserable without one. Can't we have two?"
"Perhaps so; but first let me read you Cousin Bessie's letter:
My Dearest Jill:
I'm perfectly delighted to hear about the new
house. It will be an immense success. I know it will—you are
so wise and so practical. How I shall enjoy visiting you!
It is delightful to build houses now. Everybody thinks so much
more of the beautiful than they used to. Some of my friends
have the loveliest rooms. The tones are so harmonious, the
decorations so exquisite! Such sympathetic feeling and
spiritual unity! I wish you could see Kitty Kane's hall. It
isn't bigger than a bandbox, but there's the cunningest
little fireplace in one corner, with real antique andirons and
the quaintest old Dutch tiles. They never make a fire in it;
couldn't if they wanted to—it smokes so. But it is so lovely
and gives the hall such a sweet expression. You will forgive
me, won't you, Jill, dear? but you know you are so practical,
and I do hope you won't forget the esthetic needs of home
life.
Your loving cousin, Bet."
"Let's give up the hall fireplace," said Jack.
"By no means; our hall is large and needs a fireplace—one that will not smoke and will warm not only the hall in very cold weather, but the whole house when it isn't quite cold enough for steam. The sides and back will be of iron with an air-chamber behind them, into which fresh air will be brought from out of doors and come out well warmed at the sides." (Jill's idea was something like the above figure for the plan.)
"It will be a capital ventilator, too, for the centre of the house. There will be a damper in the hearth to let the ashes down into the ash-pit. I suppose a stove would answer, but this will be better because it won't have to be blacked, and it will last as long as the house."
"How will it look standing out there all alone by itself?"
"Haven't I told you, my dear, that whatever is well looks well?"
"Yes, but it takes a mighty faith to believe it, and I'm not even a mustard-seed. What is the little room in the southwest corner for?"
"That is the library, and for an ordinary family it is large enough. It is twelve feet by fourteen. It will hold three or four thousand books, a table, a writing-desk, a lounge and three or four easy chairs. More room would spoil the privacy which belongs to a library and make it a sort of common sitting-room. Moreover, by drawing aside the portières and opening the doors we can make it a part of the large room when we wish to; and, on the other hand, when they are closed and the bay window curtains drawn, instead of one large room we shall have three separate apartments for three solitary misanthropes, for three tête-a-têtes, or for three incompatible groups, not counting the hall—no, nor the stair-landing, which will be a capital place for a quiet—"
"Flirtation."
At this point they were interrupted by a telegram from Aunt Melville, begging them not to begin on George's plan, as she had found something much more satisfactory.
They didn't begin to build, from Cousin George's nor from any other plan, for many weeks. Until the new house should be completed, Jill had agreed to commence housekeeping in the house that Jack built, without making any alterations in it, only reserving the privilege of finding all the fault she pleased to Jack privately, in order, as she said, to convince him that it would be impossible for them to be permanently happy in such a house.
"I supposed," said Jack, with a groan, "that my company would make you blissfully happy in a cave or a dug-out."
"So it would, if we were bears—both of us. As we are sufficiently civilized, taken together, to prefer artificial dwellings, it will be much better for us to find out what we really need in a home by actual experiment for a year or two. You know everybody who builds one house for himself always wishes he could build another to correct the mistakes of the first."
"Yes, and when he has done it probably finds worse blunders in the second. Still, I'm open to conviction, and after our late architectural tour perhaps my house won't seem in comparison so totally depraved."
When they visited it, preparatory to setting up their household gods—Jack's bachelor arrangements being quite inadequate to the new order of things—Jack, with a flourish, threw the highly ornamental front door wide open. Jill walked solemnly in, and, looking neither to the right nor the left, went straight up stairs.
"Hello!" Jack called after her, "what are you going up stairs for?"
"I supposed you expected everybody to go to the second floor," said Jill, looking over the bannister, "or you wouldn't have set the stairs directly across the front entrance."
"I do, of course," Jack responded, following three steps at a time. "And now will you please signify your royal pleasure as to apartments?"
"Oh, yes! The first requisite is a room with at least one south window."
"Here it is. A southerly window and a cloudy sky—two windows, in fact. And look here: see what a glorious closet. It goes clear up to the ceiling."
"It isn't a closet at all; only a little cupboard. It wouldn't hold one-half of your clothes nor a tenth part of mine. And there's no fireplace in the room—not even a hole for a stovepipe."
"Furnace, my dear. We shall be warmed from the regions below. There's the register."
"I see. But where shall the bed stand? On these two sides it would come directly in front of a window; on this side there isn't room between the two doors; on that, there's the 'set bowl'—I hate 'set bowls'—and the furnace register in the floor."
"That's so. I never had any bed in this room. Try the dining-room chamber; that has a south window. The bed can stand on the north side and the dressing table over in the other corner."
"Yes, in the dark, with a window behind my back. Oh! Jack, why didn't you get a wife before you planned your house?"
"I did try."
"You did! You never mentioned it to me before. What is this little room for?"
"Why, nothing in particular. It came so, I suppose—part of the hall, you know; but it wouldn't be of any use in the hall, so I made a room of it. It will hold a cot bed if we should happen to have a house full of company."
"It will never be needed for that with three other guest rooms; but I see what can be done. You know I promised not to make any alterations; but destruction isn't alteration, and as this little room is beside the front chamber, with only the little cupboards between, a part of the partition between the rooms can be destroyed. There will be no need of a door; a portière will be better, and I can use the small room for a dressing-room and closet. So that is nicely arranged; and while you are marking where the partition is to be cut away I will explore the first story."
Now, the stairs were built in a very common fashion, having a sharp turn at the top, which made the steps near the balustrade exceedingly steep and narrow. Jill's foot slipped on the top step and down she went, feet foremost, never stopping till she reached the hall floor below. Jack, hearing the commotion, ran to the rescue, caught his foot in the carpet and came tumbling after, with twice as much noise and not half as much grace. Happily the staircase was well padded under the carpet, and finding Jill unhurt as well as himself, Jack helped her to rise and coolly remarked:
"You certainly can't find any fault with the stairs, Jill, dear. If there had been one of those square landings midway it would have taken twice as long to come down. I—I had them made so on purpose. Will you walk into my parlor?"
They went in and sat down in easy-chairs.
"I suppose," said Jill, "that our native land contains about a million houses with stairs like these and just such halls—if people will persist in calling them 'halls,' when they are only little narrow, dark, uncomfortable entries. If we were going to make any alterations in this house—which we are not, only destructions—- I should take these out, cut them in two in the middle, double them up, straighten the crook at the top and shove them outside the house, letting the main roof drop down to cover them. Then I would make a large landing at the turn, large enough for a wide seat, a few book shelves and a pretty window. This could be of stained glass, unless the view outside is more interesting than the window itself. The merit of a stained-glass window," Jill observed, very wisely, "is that the sunlight makes a beautiful picture of it inside the house during the day, and the same thing, still more beautiful, is thrown out into the world by the evening lamps, and the darker the night the brighter the picture. After the stairs were moved out, the little hall, if joined by a wide doorway, to the room we are now in would become of some value. There is no grate in this room, and a chimney might be built in the outer wall, with a fireplace opposite the wide doorway. Then, taken all together, we should have a very pretty sitting-room. I shouldn't call that an alteration—should you, Jack?—only an addition."
"Certainly not. Tearing down partitions, taking out plumbing, building a few chimneys, moving stairways, and such little things, can't be called 'alterations'—oh, no."
"And the house will be worth so much more when you come to sell it."
"Of course. But why do you call this a 'sitting-room?' It wouldn't be possible to sell a house that has no parlor; besides this is marked 'parlor' on the plan."
"I prefer the spirit of the plan to the letter of it. This is the pleasantest room—almost the only pleasant room on this floor. It is sunny and convenient, it looks out upon the street and across the lawn, and whatever it is labeled it will be our common every-day sitting-room. For similar reasons we will take the chamber over it for our own room."
"What becomes of our hospitality if we keep the best for ourselves?"
"What becomes of our common sense if we make ourselves uncomfortable the year round in order to make a guest a little less uncomfortable over night. I try to love my neighbor as myself; I can't love him three hundred and sixty-five times as well. Now, if you are rested, we will go and see if the architect has come."
He had not arrived, but they found a ponderous package of plans from Aunt Melville, with an explanatory note, a letter from Cousin Bessie admonishing Jill that her new home ought to be "a perfect poem, pervaded and perfumed by a rare feeling of tender longing and homely aspiration," and another from her father's oldest sister.
"For fifty years," Aunt Jerusha wrote, "I have lived in what would now be called an old-fashioned house, though it was new enough when I came to it, and I always think of the Scripture saying when I hear about the many inventions that men have sought out and are putting into houses now-a-days. The danger is not so much from the inventions themselves as from what they lead to. They promise great things, but I've learned to be suspicious of anything or anybody that makes large promises. I've learned, too, that realities sometimes go by contraries as well as dreams. The poorest folks are often the richest, and the greatest saving often turns out to be the greatest waste. Air-tight stoves saved the wood-pile, but they gave us colds and headaches. So your uncle put them away and we went back to the fireplaces. Then came the hot-air furnaces, which seemed so much less trouble than open fires, but taking care of the open fires wasn't half so troublesome as taking care of sick folks; and the same thing we learned to our bitter cost of the plumbing pipes that creep around like venomous serpents and promise to save so many steps. Perhaps they do, but it seems to me that much of our vaunted labor-saving is at best only a transfer. We work all the harder at something else or compel others to work for us. When I began housekeeping I had no difficulty in taking care of my large house without any help, nor in caring for my family while it was small. Yet I hadn't a single modern invention or labor-saving machine, I have had a great many since and have tried a great many more. When I find one that helps in the work that must be done I am glad to keep it. If it merely does something new—something I had never done before—I keep the old way. Multiplying wants may be a means of grace to the half-civilized, but our danger lies in the other direction: we have too many wants already. And this is what I sat down to say to you, my dear child: Don't make housekeeping such a complex affair that you must give to it all your time and strength, leaving no place for the 'better part.' Don't fill your house with furniture too fine to be used, and don't try to have everything in the latest fashion. I see many beautiful things and read of many more, but nothing is half so beautiful to me as the things that were new fifty years ago and are still in daily use. Of planning houses I know but little. For one thing, I should say, have the kitchen and working departments as close at hand as possible. This will save many weary steps, whether you do your own work or leave it with servants, the best of whom need constant watching and encouragement, or they will not make life any easier or better worth living."
"Isn't this rather a solemn letter?" Jack inquired.
"Yes; it's a solemn subject."
"Shall you 'do your own work'?"
"Of course I shall. How can I help it?
but just precisely what my own work will be I am not at present prepared to say."
"Is Aunt Melville as solemn as Aunt Jerusha?"
"Aunt Melville assures her dear niece that 'the last plans are absolutely beyond criticism: the rooms are large and elegant, the modern conveniences perfect, the kitchen and servants' quarters isolated from the rest of the house'—"
"That won't suit the other aunty."
"The porte cochère and side entrance most convenient and the front entrance sufficiently distinguished by the tower. I particularly like the porte cochère at the side. If none of your callers came on foot there would be no objection to having it at the front entrance, but it isn't pleasant to be compelled to walk up the carriage-way. As you see, this is a brick house, and I am persuaded you ought to build of bricks. It will cost ten or fifteen per cent. more—possibly twenty—but in building a permanent home you ought not to consider the cost for a moment.'"
"That's a comfortable doctrine, if everybody would live up to it," said Jack.
"Yes; and like a good many other comfortable doctrines, it contains too much truth to be rejected—not enough to be accepted. We must count the cost, but if we limit ourselves to a certain outlay, and positively refuse to go beyond that, we shall regret it as long as we live. We may leave some things unfinished, but whatever is done past alteration, either in size or quality, must be right, whatever it costs."
And herein Jill displayed her good sense. It is, indeed, a mistake to build a house beyond the possibility of paying for it, or of maintaining it without a constant struggle, but in building a permanent home there is more likely to be lasting regret through too close economy in the first outlay, than through extravagance—regret that can only be cured by an outlay far exceeding what the original cost would have been.
The architect came as the sun went down, and, after being duly warmed, fed and cheered, was informed by Jill that all she expected from him that evening was an explanation of the respective merits of wood and brick houses. Jack begged the privilege of taking notes, to keep himself awake, Jill begged the architect to be as brief as possible, and the architect begged for a small blackboard and a piece of chalk, that he might, in conveying his ideas, use the only one, true, natural and universal language which requires no grammar, dictionary or interpreter.
"
T
here are two things belonging to modern civilization," the architect
began, "that fill me with amazement. This morning, at the usual hour, I
sat at my own breakfast table. During the day I have been reading and
writing, eating, drinking and making merry with pleasant acquaintances,
old and new. I have observed the architecture of a dozen cities and a
hundred villages and have seen landscapes without number. I have been
occupying an elegantly finished and furnished drawing-room all the
time, with every possible comfort and convenience at hand, and now am
sitting at your fireside, two hundred and fifty miles from home. I have
just assured the girl I left behind me of my safe arrival, and have
listened to her grateful reply. With my ten thousand companions going
in the same direction I have met ten thousand others crossing and
recrossing our path, every one of whom was as safe and comfortable as
ourselves, every one of whom knew the hour and the minute at which he
would reach his destination. To an observer above the clouds our
pathways would appear more frail than the finest gossamer; and the most
daring engineer that ever lived, seeing for the first time our mode of
travel, would stake his reputation that we were rushing to
inevitable destruction. Yet every foot of our way has been so guarded
that not one of these swiftly-moving palaces has swerved from its track
or been hindered on its course. This annihilation of space, with the
human skill, vigilance and fidelity incidental to it, are more
wonderful to me than any tales of magic, stranger than any fiction. I
believe because I see; nevertheless it is incredible. My second
amazement is that fire insurance companies should continue to live and
thrive against such apparently fearful odds, for I see whole villages
and cities composed of buildings that seem expressly designed to invite
speedy combustion, and at the same time to resist all attempts to
extinguish a fire once started in their complex interiors. Indeed, the
most effective modes of treatment yet discovered for a burning building
are drowning it with all its contents in a deluge of water or blowing
it up with gunpowder. It is an open question which of the two methods
is to be preferred.
"Let me show you how a wooden house is built. The sills and joists of the first floor are comparatively safe, because they are not boxed in with dry boards, and even with furnace and ash-pits in the cellar there would be little danger from a fire down below if it were not for the careful provision made for carrying it into the upper part of the structure. This provision, however, is most effectively made by means of the upright studs and furrings that stand all around the outside of the building and reach across it wherever a partition is needed. Accordingly, every wooden house has from one hundred to one thousand wooden flues of a highly inflammable character arranged expressly to carry fire from the bottom to the top, valiantly consuming themselves in the operation. Furthermore, they are frequently charged with shavings and splinters of wood, which, becoming dry as tinder, will respond at once to a spark from a crack in the chimney, an overheated stove or furnace-pipe, or a match in the hands of an inquisitive mouse. They are, likewise, so arranged that no water can be poured inside them till they fall apart and the house collapses, for they reach to the roof, whose sole duty is to keep out water, whether it comes from the clouds or from a hose-pipe, but which, for economical reasons, is made sufficiently open to allow the air to pass through it freely, thus insuring a good draught when the fire begins to burn. To complete the system and prevent the possibility of finding where the fire began, the spaces between the joists of the upper floors communicate with the vertical flues, and these highways and byways for rats and mice, for fire and smoke, for odors from the kitchen, noises from the nursery and dust from the furnace and coal-bin, are also strewn with builders' rubbish, which carries flame like stubble on a harvest-field.