Should your cellar happen to be in a gravelly knoll,--you are thrice
and four times blessed if it is,--and if there is a stony pasture
near it or a quarry from which you can get the chips, you may try a
concrete wall of small stones, gravel, and cement. It will be strong
and durable; with a wheelbarrow you can make it yourself if you
choose, and the rats will despise it.

Whether your house is one story or ten, built of pine or granite, you
can have no better foundation than good hard brick laid in cement
mortar; cellular above the footing, as brick walls should usually be
made. Between this and stone it will be then a question of economy to
be determined by local circumstances.

The details and accessories of cellars, their floors, ventilation, and
various conveniences, belong to the interior equipments. There is,
however, one point that even precedes the foundation,--the altitude.
As the question commonly runs, "How high shall the top of the
underpinning be?" Of course this can only be given on an actual site.
It is unfortunate to plant a house so low in the ground that its
cellar forms a sort of cesspool for the surrounding basin; most absurd
to set it up on a stilted underpinning until it looks like a Western
gatepost, lifted every year a few inches out of the ground by the
frost, till it finally topples over and has to be set anew. Two things
you will notice in locating your house,--as soon as the walls and roof
are raised, the distance to the street in front will seem to be
diminished, and the ground on which the building stands will appear
lower than before, lower than you expected or desired. There is so
much said and sung about houses being set too low, that it is quite
common to find them pushed out of the ground, cellar and all, as
though this would atone for a want of elevation in the land itself.