Let some member of the family visit every portion of the house before it is shut up for the night. (While he is seeing to the safety of the fires and lights, he can also give an eye to bolts and bars, and thus fulfil another most necessary precaution.) See that there is no glimmering of light beneath the bedroom doors for any unreasonable time after the inmates have retired to rest. Insist on ascertaining the cause of any smell of burning. It may be only a piece of rag safely smouldering in a grate, but satisfy yourself upon the point without delay. Do not rake out a fire at night, but allow it to burn itself out in the grate. (We have already referred to the danger of hearthstones set upon timber.) Do not allow an unused fireplace to be closed up with a screen unless it is first ascertained that there is no collection of soot in the chimney, and no communication with any other flue from which a spark may come. Caution servants not to throw _hot_ ashes into the dust-bin. Let the slightest escape of gas be remedied as soon as possible, and remember that the common form of telescope gasalier requires water at certain intervals, or it will become a source of danger. Finally, forbid all kinds of petroleum and benzoline lamps to be trimmed except by daylight. (A lamp was the initial cause of the great Chicago fire.) Many other precautions will suggest themselves to the careful housekeeper. But after all, the best precaution is common-sense, which, however, is the least available, being the misnomer for a faculty which is far from common. A CAST OF THE NET. THE STORY OF A DETECTIVE OFFICER. IN FOUR CHAPTERS.--CHAPTER II. By ten o'clock on the following morning I had sketched out my plan, and more than that, I was down at the water-side and looking after a lodging, for I never let the grass grow under my feet. I must say, however, that I very much disliked the east end of London, and especially the river-side part of it; everything was so dirty and miserable and crowded, that to a man of really decent tastes like myself, it was almost purgatory to pass a day in it. And on this particular occasion the weather changed the very day I went there; it was getting on towards late autumn (October in point of fact), and we had been having most beautiful weather; but this very morning it came on to rain, a close thick rain, and we didn't have three hours of continuous fine weather while I stopped in the east. I was not likely to be very particular about my lodgings in one sense, though in another I was more particular than any lodger that ever came into the neighbourhood; and after a little trouble I pitched upon a public-house again, chiefly because my going in and out would attract less attention there than at a private house; so I secured a small second-floor back room at the _Anchor and Five Mermaids_, or the _Anchor_ as it was generally called, for shortness.