No evidence has been found that they used any domestic animals, no relic of wheeled vehicles, neither iron, steel, nor copper implements; and yet they built houses more than five stories high, and cut joists with stone axes.

They, moreover, built over the joists with small bricks as high as the protection of the plutei and vineae permitted them; and on that place they laid two beams across, angle-ways, at a small distance from the outer walls, to support the rafters which were to cover the turret, and on the beams they laid joists across in a direct line, and on these they fastened down planks.

The Cabinet Minister controlled his indignation admirably, and with his pudgy knuckles rapped the offending newspaper, with the motion used by a carpenter when trying to locate the joist in a plastered wall, as he said: "Here is absolutely the most damnably mischievous thing I have seen for years, and this abominable sheet is featuring it on the Women's Page.

It shook the joists and filled the loft with that shrill sinister sound, which is like an echo of the lamentable complaint of the dead, and it appeared to him that these groanings of the tempest mingled with the groanings of his soul.

Iron columns, painted red, and fixed into stone sockets at short distances apart, supported the joists of the ceiling; facing the street, a huge framework standing erect, and denoting the centre of the surrounding paling, supported the great cross-beam of the first story, that is to say, supported the whole house.