INTERNAL ARRANGEMENT OF TOWN-HOUSES. 835 



Fire risk rarely enters the head of any builder, and he is content 

 to leave the upper floors to be cut off by the burning of the wooden 

 attic stairs, and allow the occupants to be slowly grilled or suffocated, 

 that is, so far as any means of escape shall have been provided by 

 him. In all high street houses ready access should be made at various 

 points in the attic story to the roof, and iron ladders fixed against the 

 party walls, so as to enable the occupants to get readily away. This 

 has its objections, of course, as enabling thieves to pass from an empty 

 house to any of those in the same block ; but good trap-doors, well 

 bolted and lined with iron, would practically keep them out, or at least 

 they would make noise enough in their attempt to open them to make 

 themselves heard when the house was occupied by the family. 



Speaking-tubes should be put up in every house, or at all events 

 one communicating on every floor, for it is quite easy to establish a 

 simple code of signals by which one whistle calls the down-stairs serv- 

 ants, and two for those on the nursery-floors. In this manner the 

 constant running up and down stairs to answer bells, and then to bring 

 what is wanted perhaps up many flights of stairs, is avoided. 



As Emerson says truly, in one of his essays : " Take off all the roofs 

 from street to street, and we shall seldom find the temple of any higher 

 god than prudence. The progress of domestic living has been in clean- 

 liness, in ventilation, in health, in decorum, in countless means and acts 

 of comfort, in the concentration of all the utilities of every clime in 

 each house. . . . The houses of the rich are confectioners' shops, where 

 we get sweetmeats and wine ; the houses of the poor are imitations of 

 these to the extent of their ability." Avoid all such imitations ; let 

 our houses be fitted for every-day wants, for every-day requirements ; 

 let them above all be clean, be comfortable, be healthy ; let there be 

 no unfound skeletons, no tangles that are not unraveled ; open up the 

 doors, let light and air in upon the skeletons, searcl\ them out ; make 

 the houses you live in pure from end to end, and depend upon it you 

 will have less disease of mind or body, less worry, less enervation, 

 unless you agree with the Scriptural statement that " Ahithophel set 

 his house in order and hanged himself." One would have expected 

 him to hang himself because his house was not set in order. 



Remember always that the healthiness, the comfort, and the pleas- 

 ant and artistic arrangement of your houses mean the healthiness, the 

 education, and the bodily and mental soundness of your children. — 

 From a Lecture hefore the Society of Arts. 



