ntry who make their own gas by a
very simple process. This is worth an inquiry from those who build.
There are also contrivances now advertised, with good testimonials, of
domestic machines for generating gas, said to be perfectly safe,
simple to be managed, and producing a light superior to that of the
city gas works. This also is worth an inquiry when "our house" is to
be in the country.

And now I come to the next great vital element for which "our house"
must provide,--WATER. "Water, water, everywhere,"--it must be
plentiful, it must be easy to get at, it must be pure. Our ancestors
had some excellent ideas in home living and housebuilding. Their
houses were, generally speaking, very sensibly contrived,--roomy,
airy, and comfortable; but in their water arrangements they had little
mercy on womankind. The well was out in the yard; and in winter one
must flounder through snow and bring up the ice-bound bucket, before
one could fill the tea-kettle for breakfast. For a sovereign princess
of the republic, this was hardly respectful or respectable. Wells have
come somewhat nearer in modern times; but the idea of a constant
supply of fresh water by the simple turning of a stop-cock has not yet
visited the great body of our houses. Were we free to build "our
house" just as we wish it, there should be a bath-room to every two or
three inmates, and the hot and cold water should circulate to every
chamber.

Among our _must-be's_, we would lay by a generous sum for plumbing.
Let us have our bath-rooms, and our arrangements for cleanliness and
health in kitchen and pantry; and afterwards let the quality of our
lumber and the style of our finishing be according to the sum we have
left. The power to command a warm bath in a house at any hour of day
or night is better in bringing up a family of children than any amount
of ready medicine. In three quarters of childish ailments the warm
bath is an almost immediate remedy. Bad colds, incipient fevers,
rheumatisms, convulsions, neuralgias innumerable, are washed off in
their first beginnings, and run down the lead pipes into oblivion.
Have, then, O friend, all the water in your house that you can afford,
and enlarge your ideas of the worth of it, that you _may_ afford a
great deal. A bathing-room is nothing to you that requires an hour of
lifting and fire-making to prepare it for use. The apparatus is too
cumbrous,--you do not turn to it. But when your chamber opens upon a
neat, qui