House £s? Garden 
jointed so as to admit of a little movement, 
and roughcast is generally panelled with the 
same object. Coloring material, suitable as 
mortar stains, can be used in the “slap 
dash ” coat of external plastering ; and if well 
mixed, wears far better than any paint, besides 
costing only a trifle more than the uncolored 
roughcast. Such a wall bleaches out a little 
in fifteen or twenty years, and is slightly 
streaked in appearance compared with new 
work, yet it not disfigured by cracks (as it 
need not be) its general appearance is slightly 
improved by time. 
The wearing quality of brickwork and terra 
cotta is a subject for an article by itself or even 
for a volume. In a single city block there 
will often be seen twenty different varieties 
of brick that vary from thoroughly good to 
hopelessly bad in appearance. The lighter 
in color the brick the more susceptible to 
disfigurement, but the opposite is not true. 
A Baltimore pressed facade, for instance, 
changes but little, and never deteriorates in 
appearance, whereas a wall of water-struck 
brick, much darker originally than the pressed 
brick, changes considerably more and gener¬ 
ally, though not always, improves. Few 
surfaces are more uninteresting than a pressed 
brick wall laid in red mortar. If soot or 
dust settles upon it the next rain washes the 
dirt away and the color is almost unchanging, 
but a wall of water-struck brick is not 
uniform in color, even when new; and 
the separate bricks, absorbing more or less 
moisture, according as they are more or less 
porous, take on an additional depth of color¬ 
ing and become more variegated with time, 
while remaining harmonious as a mass. As the 
mortar is washed out from between the joints, 
the individual bricks cast deeper shadows, 
and the surface of the wall is more and more 
diversified. An old wall, even after being 
repointed surpasses a new wall of the same 
brick. In patching and adding on to brick¬ 
work the color of the mortar should be care¬ 
fully studied. It has happened that a new 
wall with white joints proved to be much 
less like the adjoining old wall than if the 
joints had been black, since the white mortar 
of the older wall had turned dark gray, and 
black mortar in the new brick work would 
have faded much sooner to gray than the 
white will darken. 
No other brick gains so much with time 
as ordinary water-struck brick. A great 
variety of mottled bricks keep on looking 
as well as they begin. There is a brown 
mottled brick which harmonizes with red 
sandstone trimmings and sheet copper, and 
there are buildings constructed of these 
materials that look at least as well after fifteen 
years as they did when new. There is also 
a gray mottled brick very harmonious with 
water-struck brick and almost unchanging; 
but when it comes to the lighter shades and 
especially to pure yellow or white bricks, 
their newness and freshness of appearance is 
very brief. When once disfigured they are 
past redemption. Yellow brick is very un¬ 
certain in its weathering, and the different 
tones that it will assume are not accordant in 
the same wall. Except for country work it 
is a good brick to avoid, and so is white. 
Enamelled brick is relatively expensive 
and is not often seen exposed to the weather, 
nor will it bear exposure unless the brick is 
of the very best quality. Every rain washes 
it clean, and no other material reflects so 
much light into dark places, but if moisture 
penetrates behind the enamel and freezing 
scales it off, the brick must be removed or 
the building is permanently defaced. A 
place where the enamel has scaled can be 
seen a hundred yards away although a silver 
dollar would cover it, and a wall badly scaled 
looks as if it had been the target of a Gatling 
gun. 
We have made much progress in the 
manufacture of terra cotta, but not yet 
enough. There is at a New England Uni¬ 
versity a small building devoted to the 
teaching of music, built about twenty-five 
years ago and trimmed with terra cotta. 
Hardly a square foot of lintel, sills, or belt 
courses but lost some flakes off' the surface. 
The building looked like a ruin and had to 
be restored. The terra cotta we use nowa¬ 
days is fairly proof against frost, but this 
material is so seldom treated as terra cotta, 
is so often an imitation of cut stone, and the 
frequent white joints darken so much more 
than the terra cotta itself that the result is 
unpleasantly conspicuous in a very few years. 
Red terra cotta wears better than the buff 
or the white; the latter will stand exposure 
to the weather, but not to coal smoke. 
87 
