Sec. 14.] 



FARM-HOUSES. 



283 



peculiar form the centre of the house is at once reached on entering the front 

 door. The second story is quite similar to the fii-st, closets occupying the 

 spaces over the library and j^antry, and a tine balcony over the veranda, 

 reached through glass doors. 



"To meet the full requirements which were had in view, in this arrange- 

 ment, a site sliould bo selected having .a southern or eastern exposure if in 

 the country, and the building set with both full fronts to the street, so that 

 the veranda or front door will have a direct front aspect. If, however, the 

 location be in city or village, it would bo desirable to procure a lot having 

 two fronts, if possible looking easterly and southerly, and place the building 

 with a front to each road, the front door looking toward the angle of the 

 street." 



308. Ventilation of Dwellinssi — In whatever form, or upon whatever plan 

 you build, do not forget the necessity of ventilation. Our dwellings are often 

 charnel houses. Tiie very first necessity of every human being — pure air — 

 is rarely regarded in their construction. The air actually inhaled steals in 

 at crevices and crannies, felon-like, because it cannot be shut out. Only the 

 defects of our architecture prevent our dying of a vitiated, poisoned, mephitic 

 atmosphere, from which the vital element has been exhausted. Most men, 

 including architects, seem ignorant of the fact that the atmosphere is a com- 

 bination uf different gases, only one of which is wholesome and life-giving, 

 and that this is consumed in the lungs upon inhalation, leaving the residue 

 to bo expelled as a poison. Tlie church, lecture-room or other structure, 

 with doors and windows closed, with no provision for ventilation, soon 

 becomes a slaughter-pen, and ought to be closed by the public authurities. 



Our manufactories and school-houses are nearly all disgraceful to tiicir 

 owners and architects in regard to ventilation. TlieV are often divided into 

 rooms less tlian ten feet higli, each thickly stowed wiih human beings, who 

 breatho and work and sweat in an atmosphere overheated and filled with 

 grease, wool or cotton waste, leather or cloth, and the poisonous refuse 

 expelled from human lungs, wliich together are enougli to incite a ]'lague, 

 and are, in fact, the primary cause of nearly all the fevers, dysenteries, con- 

 sumptions, etc., by which so many graves are peopled. No factory should 

 be permitted to commence operations, nor school opened, until it shall 

 have been inspected by some competent public officer, and certified to be 

 thoroughly provided with ventilators — not windows, which marj be opened. 

 but in a cold or stormy day very certainly will not be — but apertures for 

 the ingress of fresh air, and otliera for the egress of vitiated air, both out of 

 the reach of ignorance and defying the efforts of confirmed depravity of tlie 

 senses to close them. 



Our bed-rooms are generally fit only to die in. The best are those of n few 

 of the intelligent and aflluent, whicli are carefully ventilated ; next to these 

 come those of the cabins and rudest farm-houses, with an incli or two of 

 var-incv l)etween the chimney and the roof, and with cracks on evcrj- side, 

 throuirfi which the stars may bo seen. The ceiled and plasteretl bed-rooms, 



