The House that Jill Built after Jacks had Proved a Failure | Page 7

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.
"If you cannot find the clean outlet for these buried drains or tiles below the level of the
cellar bottom, then raise the cellar, house and all. No matter if you are accused of having
a 'stuck up' house--better be stuck up than stuck in the mud. Raise it till the entire cellar is
well above the level of thorough drainage. If this happens to carry it above the surface of
the ground, set the house on posts and hang the cellar under the floor like a work-bag
under a table or the basket to a balloon.
"The foundation walls must indeed touch solid bottom and extend below the action of
frost; but if the wall above the gridiron and below the paving of the cellar is of hard
stones, or very hard bricks laid in cement, there will be little risk from rising moisture.
"After all, the chief danger is not from underground springs, from clean surface water or
an occasional rising of the floods, but from the unclean wastes that in our present
half-civilized state are constantly going out of our homes to poison and pollute the earth
and air around them."
"Half-civilized indeed!" said Jack, interrupting the reading of the letter. "Besides, he is
premature as well as impertinent. He doesn't know but the house will stand on a granite
boulder."
"I suppose he intends to warn us, and I am not certain that our lot is as dry as it ought to
be. At all events we will have some holes dug in different places and see if any water
comes into them."
"Of course it will. Haven't we just had the 'equinoctial'? The ground is full of water
everywhere."
"If it is full this spring it will be full every spring. We may as well order the drain tiles."

"It shall be done," said Jack. "Now let us have the second proviso. I hope it will be
shorter than the first."
"And, secondly,"