Looking up now at the neatly whitewashed ceiling we cannot help but be suspicious of the plaster beneath the surface, so going over to that part of the ceiling above the smoke-pipe leading from the furnace to the chimney we jab our cane against it, and, as we expected, a big slab breaks off and crashes to the floor, revealing partly charred wooden lath beneath, which have been baking in the heat rising from the smoke-pipe, and which would eventually catch fire. Examining the plaster very closely we observe that in addition to being a very thin coat it has no hair in it to act as a reinforcement for the plaster key which held it to the lath base. But being rather inquisitive about the construction hidden behind the plaster, and having broken some of it down, the removal of the few lath is worth the look behind them. And there we see the girder which supports the floor-joists resting upon the chimney instead of on a special pier or column. This saved the contractor the cost of the pier or the column, but the owner would probably lose his house some day by fire creeping through the joints of the brickwork of the chimney to the ends of this wooden girder, for it was quite evident that the mortar used in the chimney was not much better than that used in the wall, and it is well known that lime mortar disintegrates under the action of hot gases from burning wood. Turning our attention now to other parts of the cellar, we notice that in the floor of the laundry a place had been broken into, and upon inquiry we find that this hole was dug by the plumber in repairing a stoppage of the system of drainage-pipes under the floor. It seems that the contractor had omitted placing any clean-outs in the pipes which he had laid under the cellar floor, and the owner’s wife, by accident, in pouring a pail of wash water down the water-closet in the cellar had allowed a rag to go down with it, which clogged up the system, so that the waste from the kitchen-sink began to back up into the laundry-tubs. As there was no way to get at the pipes, the plumber, in cleaning out the system, was obliged to break through the floor and cut out a hole in the pipe to run a wire through to the clean-out on the house-trap. The contractor who built the house had saved about fifteen dollars in omitting this clean-out, but the owner lost fifty dollars in plumbers’ bills before he repaired this defect. [Illustration: Fresh Air Inlet Under Window]