Your foundation is all right in theory, and if I was going to put up a steam chimney, a government building, or anything else that must be done in the best way, regardless of expense, I should go for it.  For cheap, common work, ’t isn’t worth while to be over-nice or over-wise.  I tell you, there is danger of knowing too much about some things.  According to your notion, a man couldn’t do better than to stick the ground full of tenpenny nails to start with, and I should think a thousand-legged worm would be about the most substantial animal that treads the globe.

As to planting my house, when I’ve bought the lot, I’ll ask you to take a look at it.  I have a fancy for some sort of a sidehill, so I can get into my house, from one side at least, without going up stairs out of doors, and still have the first floor airy and dry.

Yours,

John.

LETTER VII.

From the Architect.

Nature’s bricks are better than ours.

Dear John:  Where to build your house may be, in truth, a question quite as important as how to build it.  I regret my inability to give you the advice you need.  Dr. Bowditch has, I think, intimated that there is an elysian field not far from here of such rare sanitary virtue that if its locality were known there would scarcely be standing-room within its borders for those who would flock thither, or something to that effect.  I trust we shall some time have a scientific practical investigation of the whole matter, and such definite information as will enable us at least to qualify, by artificial means, evils that cannot, in thickly settled regions, be wholly avoided.  Meantime stick to your text, keep high and dry.  If you are bound to have a sidehill, and can find none to suit, you can doubtless make one of the earth thrown from the cellar wherever you locate.

Have you decided what materials to use, whether wood, brick, or stone?  You will hardly use any other.  Glass houses are not popular, although for their sunlight they ought to be; paper ones are not yet introduced among us,—­I’m expecting them every year; and iron, important and useful as it is, and destined to become more so, is not adapted to such buildings as yours.  Wood, brick, or stone, then,—­which of the three?  To spare you all possible confusion, we will take them separately and in order, beginning with the hardest.

For rural dwellings in New England stone is rarely used, except for foundations below ground, being, according to the common notion, better for that purpose than brick, but not as worthy to be seen, unless hammered and chiselled into straight lines and smooth surfaces.  Errors both.  Well-burned brick laid in cement mortar are nearly always as good as a stone foundation, while nothing can be more effective in appearance than a well-laid wall of native, undressed stone.