House and Garden 
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THE MAN BEHIND THE GUN 
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McClure’s Magazine 
Woman’s Home Companion 
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SUBSCRIPTION BUREAU 
1006 Arch Street, Philadelphia, Pa. 
from the rigorous climate of the New 
World. Notwithstanding the almost 
innumerable alternations from dry to 
damp and damp to dry to which it must 
have been subjected during the more 
than two and a half centuries that it has 
remained in these walls, this eel-grass 
was found to be in a perfect state of pre¬ 
servation. The walls of the “ Babcock 
House,” at Milton, Mass., built 1723, 
are similarly packed with eel-grass, 
which is also untouched by decay. The 
cause of this preservation, so remarkable 
when we compare it with the quick decay 
of the herbaceous growths of the air, is 
found in the chemical constitution of the 
eel-grass, which contains silicon in place 
of the carbon of common grasses; and 
this also accounts for the fact that the 
eel-grass is not inflammable. In this 
connection it may be well to observe that 
the presence in the eel-grass of a large 
percentage of iodine, common to all sea- 
plants, renders it free from the attacks 
of moths and vermin, to destruction by 
which wool felts and all other materials 
of animal origin are peculiarly subject. 
The long, flat blades of eel-grass, cross¬ 
ing each other at every angle, form the 
innumerable minute dead air spaces 
which give to it most of its great insula¬ 
ting power; and their elasticity con¬ 
tributes the resilience which furnishes 
the rest .—American Architect and Build¬ 
ing News. 
ENGLAND’S SMALLEST CHURCH 
IV/fUCH of Lady Wentworth’s child- 
hood was spent at the Lovelace 
country seat at Ashley Combe, near Por- 
lock, Somersetshire. Ashley Combe theo¬ 
retically is rated as a village, but Love¬ 
lace Castle and the houses of the ten¬ 
antry who minister to its needs are the 
only buildings for miles around. The 
castle stands on the side of a hill, look¬ 
ing out over the Bristol Channel, and the 
estate stretches for miles along the steep- 
cliffed shore and back over the downs 
into the country Richard Blackmore 
made the setting for his “Lorna Doone” 
—the Doone Valley, Dunkery Beacon 
and Bagworthy Water. Within the 
borders of the estate is Ashley Combe 
Church, the smallest church in England. 
It is complete in every detail with a 
rudely carved altar cut from a single 
block of granite; a tiny chancel sepa¬ 
rated from the body of the church by 
an oak chancel screen so old that it is 
2 
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