impervious to sound. The music of murmuring brooks
is delightful to our ears, so is the patter of the soft rain on the
roof; but the splashing of water in a, bath-tub and the gurgling of
unseen water-pipes are not pleasant accompaniments to a dinner-table
conversation. Thirdly, it must be perfectly ventilated--not the
drainpipes merely,--but the room itself in summer and in winter. Two of
the above conditions can best be secured by arranging to have this
important room placed in a detached or semi-detached wing; and here
begin the compromises between convenience, cost and safety. It is
convenient to have a bath-room attached to every chamber, and there is
no doubt that this may be done with entire safety, provided you do not
regard the cost. In your plan I have adopted the middle course. There
is one bath-room for all the chambers of the second floor, not too
remote but somewhat retired, and having no communication with any other
room. It is ventilated by a large open flue carried up directly through
the roof; it has also an outside window and inlets for fresh air near
the floor. All the walls and partitions around it will be double and
filled with mineral wool, and the floors will be deafened. The 'house
side' of the water-closet traps will have three-inch iron pipes running
to the ventilating flue beside the kitchen-chimney, a flue that will
always be warm, and therefore certain to give a strong upward draught
at all times, which cannot be said of any other flue in the house, not
even of the main drain, or soil-pipe, which passes up through the roof.
It would be easy to keep other flues warmed in cold weather by
steam-pipes, but in summer you will have no steam for heating purposes.
A 'circulation-pipe' might be attached to a boiler on the kitchen range
for this purpose, but in the present case such a contrivance would cost
more than the iron pipe carried from the bath-room to the flue that is
warmed by the kitchen fire. A good way to build this ventilating flue
is to inclose the smoke-pipe from the range, which may be of iron or
glazed earthen pipe, in a larger brick flue or chamber (Fig. 1),
keeping it in place by bars of iron laid into the masonry. The rising
current of warm air around the heated smoke-pipe will be as constant
and reliable as the trade winds. It will be well, indeed, if all your
chimneys are made in a similar manner; that is, by enclosing
hard-burned glazed pipe in a thin wall of bricks. Such chimney