ii6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



enforced. But, for one, I wish to record my protest against our mod- 

 ern living-cellar. A well-ventilated basement is almost an impossi- 

 bility from its low level, and it is so difficult to get our ideal conditions 

 perfectly executed, that practically they are seldom met with. I have 

 seen a great many cases of sickness which seemed to me due to base- 

 ment-living, and many cases of tuberculosis which seemed to have 

 been there developed. The last is particularly noticeable among ser- 

 vant-girls of foreign birth. In the experience of physicians in some 

 sections, it is rare to find a servant-girl living and working in a low 

 basement who has good health, though previous to coming to this 

 country, and being subjected to such conditions, good health is stated 

 to be the general rule. Many people have attacks of sickness, follow- 

 ing a time of exposure in a basement, with great regularity. 



Would it not be better for house-builders and architects to plan 

 for dwellings built more above-ground? More of a lot has to be sacri- 

 ficed, but perhaps enough may be saved in healthfulness and stair- 

 climbing to com])ensate for the loss. City yards are of slight value at 

 best. A good cellar is gained by such a change, and up-stairs dining- 

 rooms and kitchens are not only luxuries, but, it may be argued, 

 almost necessities. 



SKETCH OF CHESTER S. LYMAN". 



IN the company of Puritans who, in the severe winter of 1635, trav- 

 eled from Massachusetts Bay through the wilderness and settled 

 at Hartford and AVindsor, was Richard Lyman, who had come over 

 from England four years before in the same ship with John Eliot, the 

 Indian Apostle, and who, through his two sons Richard and John, was 

 the ancestor of all the Lymans in America. Nearly two hundred years 

 later, in the little country town of Manchester, ten miles from Hart- 

 ford, Chester Smith Lyman", his eighth lineal descendant, was born 

 January 13, 1814, the son of Chester and Mary Smith Lyman. 



He had in his boyhood only the advantages of a common country 

 school, and, like other country boys, altei-nated going to school with 

 working on the farm. Before he was nine years old he evinced un- 

 usual mechanical ingenuity, making many curious toys, windmills, 

 watcr-whoels, and the like, which rendered him a favorite with his 

 playmates. He also began soon to show a great interest in astronomy 

 and the kindred sciences, which was first awakened by an intense 

 curiosity to know how a common almanac was made. Books of all 

 kinds in that town were then rare, and of scientific books there were 

 almost none ; but he managed somehow to get hold of a few — one on 

 natural philosophy, one on surveying (Gibson's), and one on naviga- 

 tion (Bowditch's) — to borrow the last of which he walked five miles. 

 From one of these he learned the nature of lenses, and soon extempo- 



