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The Cellar And Ice-House (With brick walls between-one)

with brick walls between-one for vegetables, one for fruits, one for provis ions, one for the laundry, and a fifth for coal and the furnace, if one is used. In one corner of the cellar, under the kitchen, may also be the cistern, the strong cellar wall serving for its outer wall. A pump from the kitchen would supply water there for domestic uses; and a pipe with a stop-cock, leading through the wall into the cellar, would occasionally be a convenience and save labor. It is better, however, as a rule, to locate the cistern just outside the house, passing a pipe from it through the cellar wall below the deepest frost level, and thence to the kitchen. If built in the cellar, the cistern should be square, with heavy walls, plastered inside with three coats of water-lime.

All the apartments of a cellar should be easily accessible from the outside door and from the kitchen stairway. In the vegetable apartment, the bins should be made of dressed lumber, and painted, and located in the center, with a walk around each, so that the contents may easily be examined and assorted. The fruit shelves, made of slats two inches wide and placed one inch apart, should be put up with equal care and neatness, and with equal regard for convenience and easy access. Their place should be the most airy part of the cellar; the proper width is about two feet, and the distance apart about one foot, with the lowest shelf one foot from the floor. Pears will ripen nicely on the lower shelves under a cover of woolen blankets. The supports should, of course, be firm and strong. The bottom shelf should be of one board, on which to scatter fine fresh lime to the depth of an inch, changing it two or three times during the winter. A shelf, suspended firmly from the ceiling, and located where it will be easy of access from the kitchen, on which to place cakes, pies, meats, and any thing that needs to be kept cool and safe from cats and mice, is an absolute necessity. Its height prevents the articles placed on it from becoming damp, and gathering mold, as they sometimes do when placed on the cellar floor. In planning shelves for cans, crocks, casks, etc., regard should be had to economy of space by making the distance between the shelves correspond to the articles to stand on them, and it is well to so place the lower shelf that the meat barrels, etc., may be placed under it. The temperature of a cellar should never be below freezing, and if it is raised above fifty by a fire, outside air should be admitted to lower it. The best time for ventilating the cellar is at noon, taking care in hot weather not to admit so much outside air as to render it warm. A simple and excellent plan for ventilation, where the location of the kitchen chimney admits it, is to pass an ordinary stove-pipe through the floor upward beside or behind the pipe of the kitchen stove, and thence by an elbow into the chimney. The draft of the chimney will carry off all the impure air that arises in the cellar, and if too great a current is created, it may be brought under complete control by a valve at the floor.

The cellar must be frequently examined and kept perfectly sweet and clean. There is no reason why it should not be as neat as the living rooms, and as free from cobwebs, decayed fruit and vegetables, and all other forms of filthiness. Whitewashing walls in winter will aid in giving it tidiness.