2S4: TDE FARMERY. [Chap. III. 



wliere too many of the middle class are lodged, with no apertures for the 

 ingress or egress of air hut the door and windows, are horrible. Nine-tenths 

 of their occujiants rarely open a window unless compelled by excessive heat, 

 and very few are careful even to leave the door ajar. To sleep in a tight 

 six-by-ten bed-room, with no aperture admitting air, is to court the ravages 

 of jiestilence and sjiecdy death. 



Our railroad cars and steatnboat berths aro atrocionsly devoid of ventila- 

 tion. A journey is taken witli far less fatigue, and more expeditiously now 

 than it was thirty years ago, but with far greater risk and harm to healtli. 

 There are probably ten thousand passenger cars now running in the United 

 States, whereof not more than one hundred are decently supplied with fresh 

 air. Most of these, Avherein forty or fifty persons are expected to sit all day 

 and dose all night, ought to be indicted as nuisances — they are fit only for 

 coffins. The men who make them probably know no better ; but those wlio 

 buy and run them have not even that poor excuse. They know that they are 

 undermining constitutions and destroying lives ; they know that ample means 

 of arresting these frightful woes are at command; yet they will not ado])t 

 them because they cost something. 



If people only knew how many thousands of lives are annually sacrificing, 

 how many hundreds of thousands are now sufi'ering from fevers and other 

 maladies which have their origin in the inhaling of noxious air, the excite- 

 ment and alarm on this subject would work a revolution in our style of 

 building. 



Wlien we lived in old-style houses, with large open fire-places, like the one 

 mentioned in the next paragraph, there was no need of being careful to build 

 air-passages in the walls of the house for ventilation, for the " fire-place, big 

 enough to roast an ox," gave the most comjjlete kind of ventilation. 



It is of the utmost importance, particularly in malarious districts, that 

 houses should bo so constructed that a free circulation of air can be had 

 through all the rooms. In the plan described in 305 this fact has been kept 

 in view. With slight modifications, the plan will answer for a house cither 

 at the north or the south. At the south the rooms would be made larger, and 

 the fuel-room would probably be substituted for the kitchen. Frequently, 

 the kitchen of a planter's house is placed several I'ods distant, without any 

 covered way between. 



309. An Old-Style Farm-hojise Kitchen in New England.— A picture of 

 one of tliese scenes of comfort has lately fallen under my observation. 

 What can be more cheerful and pleasant than the view of a fanner's kitclieii, 

 taken during the evening meal of a cold Autumn day ? It is a picture of tiiu 

 calm happiness of rural life. 



The kitchen of the old-style farm-house of New England is not the scullery, 

 or mere cooking-place of some modern house — a dirty liole or comfortless 

 out-room or sort of human bake-oven, where the cook is almost as mucli 

 cooked as the food. No, it is a room perhaps 24 feet long and IG wide, well 

 lighted, warm, neat, and every-way comfortable. Upon one side there is a 



