SOLON ROBINSON, 1848 113 



fashioned fire place, of keeping up a constant circulation 

 of air. 



Some one in your pages, I think, has said that "stoves 

 were great savers of fuel, at the expense of human lives" 

 — all of which is for the want of ventilation. It is a most 

 serious fault in the construction of nine tenths of all the 

 school houses that are heated by stoves, that there is no 

 ventilation. I have no doubt but thousands of children 

 in the United States are annually sent to a premature 

 grave by diseases contracted, aye, created, in school 

 rooms. If our wise men, who sometimes make very fool- 

 ish laws, would enact that every school room should be so 

 constructed as to remedy this evil, they would for once 

 show the world they possessed some feelings of humanity 

 at least. Daniel B. Thompson,' of Montpelier, Vt., author 

 of "Locke Amsden," is worthy to be remembered by every 

 child in America, for the beautiful manner in which he 

 has illustrated the subject of ventilating school houses. 



Solon Robinson. 



Crown Point, la., Sept., 1848. 



Robinson to Western Ranger 



[Valparaiso Western Ranger, November 17, 1848] 



Winimac, Oct. 28, 1848. 



Messrs. Editors: I notice in a late number of your 

 paper, an article calculated to mislead the purchasers of 

 Canal Lands, unless corrected. This article appears as 



' Daniel Pierce Thompson, born at Charlestown, Massachusetts, 

 on October 1, 1795; died June 6, 1868. Moved to Vermont, 1800. 

 Tutor in Virginia family, 1820. Clerk of Vermont legislature, 

 1830. Author of Gaut Gurley, Adventures of Timothy Peacock, 

 and Mary Martin, 1835; The Green Mountain Boys, 1839; Locke 

 Amsde7i, or The Schoolmaster, 1847; Lucy Hosmer, 1848; History 

 of the Town of Montpelier, 1860. Judge of the probate court, 

 Washington County, Vermont, 1837. Secretary of Vermont His- 

 torical Society, 1838; of State Education Society, 1846; of State of 

 Vermont, 1853-1855. Flitcroft, John E., The Novelist of Ver7nont: 

 A Biographical and Critical Study of Daniel Pierce Thompson, 303, 

 321-24 (Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1929). 



