onducting material is a
concession to usual modes of building. A more satisfactory construction
still would be to build the wails of hollow bricks and with air spaces
so disposed that neither wood furrings nor laths would be necessary.
There is, moreover, no good reason why the inner surfaces of the main
walls of a brick house and both sides of the partitions should not form
the final finish of the rooms. Glazed bricks or tiles built into the
walls, or secured to them after they are built, are vastly more
satisfactory than a fragile and incongruous patchwork of wood, leather,
metal, paper, paint and mortar, thrown together in some of the thousand
and one fantastic fashions that spring up in a day, run their little
course, and speedily return to the dust they have spent their short
lives in collecting. I am afraid to dwell on this theme lest I should
lie awake all night in a fever of futile protest."

"Pray don't run any risks. I move we now adjourn."

"Yes; but first let me ask one question," said Jill. "Would not the
difference of cost between a house built in the ordinary combustible
style and the same made fire-proof, or even 'slow-burning,' pay the
cost of insurance at the usual rates many times over and leave a large
margin besides?"

"Undoubtedly it would."

"Then, as an investment, what object is there in attempting to make
buildings fireproof or even approximately so?"

"Excuse me. I thought you were going to ask only one question."

CHAPTER V.

WHEN THE FLOODS BEAT AND THE RAINS DESCEND.

After the architect had retired to his room it occurred to him that he
might have answered Jill's conundrum as to the profit of building
fire-proof houses by reminding her that pecuniary loss is not the sole
objection to being burned out of house and home whenever the fire fiend
happens to crave a flaming sacrifice, in the daytime or in the night,
in summer or in midwinter, in sickness or in health; that not only
heir-looms, but hearthstones and door posts, endeared by long
associations, have a value beyond the power of insurance companies to
restore, and that protection against fire means also security against
many other ills to which the dwellers in houses are liable, not to
refer to the larger fact that there is no real wealth without
permanence, while the destruction of anything useful in the world,
wherever the loss may seem to fall, impoverishes the whole. Having
settled this point to his own satisfacti