Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 34.djvu/325

Rh him that I vowed to be at deadly fend with them till I had brought some of the chiefest of them to utter confusion, and conferring some principles of philosophy I had read, and some conveyances of architecture I had seen, with some devices of others I had heard, and some practices of mine own I had paid for, I found out this way that is after described, and a marvellous easy and cheap way it is.

"Here is the same, all put together; that the workman may see if it be well. A, the cistern; b, the little washer; c, the waste pipe; D, the seat board; e, the pipe that comes from the cistern; f, the screw; g, the scallop shell, to cover it when it is shut down; H, the stool pot; i, the stopple; k,, the current; l, the sluice; m, N, the vault into which it falls; always remember that the servant at noon and at night empty it, and leave it half a foot deep in fair water."

It seems a long stride from Sir John Harrington's pet contrivance to the complicated fittings of a water-closet in a modern city house built under existing regulations; but the evolution has, upon the whole, been through complications toward simplicity, as will be seen by Fig. 2, which represents a good form of closet of the present day, and the most important improvements in house-drainage have been made within the last twenty years. We can now say that, so far as the plumbing fixtures in the dwelling-house itself are concerned, freedom from nuisance and a sufficient degree of safety can be secured at a reasonable cost; provided that trustworthy workmen are employed in the construction of the work, and that the apparatus is properly managed