144 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



Secm-ity against fire is not the chief requisite in an ordi- 

 nary dwelling. More suffering and loss are occasioned every 

 year by imperfect warming and ventilation than by confla- 

 gration. And it happens that hollow wooden walls, papered 

 and clapboarded without, lathed and plastered within, are 

 the cheapest warm and dry walls that can be made with 

 present facilities. 



Neither is it wise to apply the motto " fewer and better" to 

 cheap houses. Rather the reverse ; for a man who owns a bit 

 of land and a house standing upon it — cheap shanty though 

 it be, liable to burn up in an hour, or blow away in a hurri- 

 cane — is a better citizen, and his children will be better 

 citizens, than if he lived in the most indestructible hired 

 tenement ever built. 



Moreover, every architect with a modicum of common 

 sense knows that these open flues in the floors, walls, and 

 ceilings, should be completely cut off with bricks and mortar 

 as often at least as at each floor and under every partition. 

 The expense of this is too trifling to be considered. A man 

 could easily do it all with his own hands in two days. 

 Then, although a fire might possibly be kindled within the 

 wall, out of sight, there would be no continuous draughts to 

 fan the flame, and convey it through the building. 



I say, "fewer and better" should not be the motto; for I 

 ■would have no man feel too poor to build himself a house, 

 and pay for it. But, by all means, let us have every 

 attainable excellence, all possible thoroughness, durability, 

 and beauty. 



Especially should the farmhouse, Avhich represents all that 

 is dignified, noble, and enduring in domestic life, be made to 

 resist fire, flood, and the ravages of time. 



Business centres change ; manufactures vary ; mechanics 

 must go where the forge, the lathe, and the engine call them. 

 Commerce and trade have no respect for boundary lines. 

 But the morning mists and the evening shades that climb the 

 everlasting hills are the same from generation to generation. 

 The rolling meadows and the murmuring streams will never 

 catch the fever of emigration ; and the brave old oak that 

 scatters acorns down the hillside has no wish to change the 

 fashion of its garments. 



A farmhouse should be the very type of stability, repose, 



