I met a man, when house-hunting for a friend some little time ago, who confided to me that he made it a business of buying any ruinous old house, if of any architectural merit and agreeably situated, that was for sale at a low price--"and many such houses fetch low prices," he said, "often, the land apart, not more than the value of their materials; sometimes these old houses possess a bit of interesting history, but that goes for nothing"; and purely as a speculation, though the speculation was not without its pleasure, he skilfully restored it, as far as possible, to its pristine estate, and he had done this each time at a considerable profit on the sale of the restored house. "I call myself a house improver," he said, with a laugh, "quite a novel and paying profession." This confession was made to me whilst looking over an interesting old Jacobean house that he had recently purchased and restored, and exceedingly well had he done it. "This," he explained, "had been let and occupied as a farmhouse for years, and little care was taken of it; as you see, it is a picturesque old building, but it was in a dreadful state when I bought it--indeed at first I almost thought it was beyond restoration. I have spent a lot of money on it, but I expect to get it all back with a fair margin of profit. Here you see an ancient house with a formal garden to match, and even an old-fashioned sun-dial in it, to say nothing of the Haddon Hall-like terrace, and all this cost me a lot; but one has to do the thing properly or you may make a failure of it, and this house is ready for occupation. Meanwhile I make it my home; I must live somewhere, and here I abide till I find a purchaser. Then I shall go in search of another old house to restore. The idea of doing such a thing came quite accidentally to me; originally I purchased an old house and restored it for my own occupation, but I had so many unsought offers for it at a big figure, nearly double what it cost me altogether, that I was tempted to sell it. Then I bought another old house and restored it in the same way, and that I sold at a substantial profit; so now I have made a trade of doing this. Look at the panelling of these rooms, all of seasoned oak, a careful copy of old panelling of the period, every bit done by adze and hand; the hinges and locks, too, are copies of old ones I found in the house. I have opened up all the fireplaces, and on removing the modern grates I luckily discovered the open hearths behind; the firebacks are all castings from old ones, and the fire-dogs are copies too from fine past specimens. The whole thing has been properly done. I have pulled down all the plaster ceilings and revealed the old rafters. The one or two sash windows I found I have replaced with mullion ones, so now you have before you the house much as it looked when first built over two centuries ago." This was quite a new way to me of making a living, or a fortune, but one learns many