[Illustration:  WARMTH IS BEAUTY.]

[Illustration:  A HIDDEN FOE.]

“Now, if the particular spot of earth on which you expect to set up the temple of your home is not well adapted to that sacred purpose, think a bit before you commence digging.  If it is low, wet and difficult of drainage; if the surface water or the drains from adjacent lands have no outlet except across it; if its size and shape compel your house to stand so near your neighbor on the south that he takes all the sunshine and gives you the odors of his dinner and the conversation of his cook in exchange; if there are no pleasant outlooks; if it is shaded by trees owned by somebody who will not be persuaded to cut them down for love nor money—­by all means turn it into a fish-pond, a sheep-pasture or a public park.  You can never build upon it a satisfactory home.  Perhaps it is within five minutes’ walk of the post-office and on the same street with Mrs. Adoniram Brown, and these considerations outweigh all others.  In that case there is no help for you.  You must make the best of it as it is.

[Illustration:  A BURIED GRIDIRON.]

“If you have a suspicion that the ground is naturally wet, that it contains hidden springs or conceals an impervious basin, making in effect a pool of standing water underground, the first necessity is a clean outlet—­not a sewer—­low enough to underdrain the lot at least a foot and a-half below the bottom of the cellar.  Having found the clean outlet, lay small drain tiles, two or three inches in diameter, under the entire house and for several feet all around it, like a big gridiron.  When this is buried under one or two feet of clean gravel or sand you will have a permanently dry plot of ground to build upon.  The same treatment will be effective if the ground is “springy.”  But there must be a “cut-off” encircling the house.  This you can make by digging a trench a foot wide, reaching down to the drain tiles, and filling it nearly to the top with loose stones or coarse gravel, the surface of the ground being graded to slope sharply toward the trench.  The surface water between it and the house, and any moisture creeping toward the house from without, will then be caught in this porous trap and fall to the gridiron.

[Illustration:  THE PROTECTING “CUT-OFF.”]

“It is possible, theoretically, to build an underground cellar so tight that it may be lifted up on posts and used for a water-tank, or set afloat like a compartment-built iron steamer.  Such walls may be necessary under certain circumstances.  They may be necessary for cellars that are founded in swamps, in salt marshes below the level of the sea, and in old river-beds, where the original iniquity of the standing water is made still more iniquitous by the inevitable foulness of the washing from streets and the unclean refuse from sinks and back doors.  But for buildings that have four independent walls, with room enough for a man to ride around his own house in a wheelbarrow without trespassing on his neighbors, and which are not hopelessly depressed below all their surroundings, it is better to use a little moral suasion on the land itself than to spend one’s resources in a defiant water-proof construction.  Instead of drain tiles, small stones covered with a thin layer of hay or straw before being buried in the sand may be used if more economical.