is scientific attainments, but it will
do no harm to remind him that an air-tight house may be a very cold
one. A man would freeze to death in a glass bottle, when a coarse,
porous blanket would keep him comfortable. Double windows are not to
keep cold air out, but to keep the heat in. India-rubber
weather-strips have, doubtless, caused ten times as many influenzas as
they have prevented. More heat will radiate through a window of single
glass than would be carried out by the air through a crack, half an
inch wide, at the side of it.

These suggestions are "just to set him a thinking."

LETTER XXXVII.

From John.

SHINGLES, SUNSHINE, AND FRESH AIR.

MY DEAR ARCHITECT: When I stepped into the background, I didn't
propose to be left entirely out in the cold. I've followed Fred
through the most of his gropings after grandeur, and listened
patiently to one of Jane's dignified essays on the sublimity of
housekeeping; but when my wife begins romancing, and the schoolmaster
is allowed to run wild, as though his moonshine was brighter than that
of other folks, I think it's time to call the meeting to order.

While you have been gossiping I have been at work, and now our house
is almost done,--that is to say, it's well begun. The stone walls of
the first story are finished, the frame is raised and covered. I've
done one thing without asking anybody's advice; covered the roof with
the best cedar shingles I could find. I hired an honest man to lay
them, who would throw out all that were dubious and lay the
cross-grained ones right side up, and painted the tin valleys both
sides before the shingles were laid. Then I took the difference in
cost between this and a good slate roof and put it in the
savings-bank. At the end of twenty years, if my roof lasts as long, my
deposit will put on the best kind of a slate roof and leave three
hundred dollars to go to the Society for the Promotion of Fine Art in
General and Rural Architecture in Particular. I know the shingled roof
may burn me up, if the chimney should happen to take fire some windy
night, but 't won't cost so much for repairs as slate if they should
blow over, either all at once, or one brick at a time. My neighbors
may not like the looks, especially while it's new; but if we have
nothing uglier than a mellow gray-shingled roof, I don't think
anybody'll be hurt. I wish we had something like the tile roofs I've
seen in foreign pictures. They'd go first-rate with