same treatment; not, perhaps, to the extent of stuffing with
sawdust,--confined air is just as good,--but the walls and the floors,
the roofs and the windows, should be made to prevent the escape of
heat. He may think I underrate his 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