AMERICAN AND EUROPEAN HOMES. 53 



a wet collar. Very many houses are rendered unhealthy by 

 decaying vegetable matter in the cellar. Old tubs and barrels, 

 and boxes and boards are allowed to accumulate there and 

 moulder away to dust, furnishing a harbor for countless loath- 

 some insects, and worse still, the winter's stock of vegetables, 

 not quite exhausted, is allowed to remain and rot and send up 

 their invisible, noxious gases into the rooms in which the family 

 live, mixing an element of death into the very air they breathe. 

 When our good women boast of their neatness and their 

 thorough house- keeping, I want to see not only their parlor and 

 kitchen, but I want to see how it is away out in the back kitchen 

 and shed, and especially I want to see how it is in their cellar. 

 A neat, even elegant parlor, will not atone for a dirty, disease- 

 breeding out-house and cellar. I fear there are many such. 



It has become almost universal to have outside blinds upon 

 our windows ; a good thing to have if used judiciously, to shut 

 out a hot summer sun, and mitigate the noonday heat, but used 

 as they so commonly are, to exclude the sun altogether, to keep 

 the carpet and curtains from fading, they become a nuisance. 

 We need the sun in our houses. We need to live within reach 

 of its beams. It is the source of life and strength to the human 

 frame as well as to the vegetable world. 



A very fruitful source of sickness, disease and death in our 

 community is to be found in our defective methods of warming 

 our houses. It is done now almost wholly by close, iron stoves 

 in our rooms or by a furnace in the cellar. It is very easy to 

 warm a house in this way. It is an economy of fuel. But one 

 result is that our houses are almost universally heated to an 

 unhealthy degree, — to a degree that but few are aware of. 



The healthy and comfortable temperature of a room in which 

 one is to be^ active, is sixty degrees Fahrenheit. If one is to sit 

 down there and be quiet, he needs either a little more heat or a 

 little more clothing. The latter would be the best. If more 

 heat is required the thermometer should not be raised above- 

 sixty-five degrees, seventy degrees is the extreme height that 

 should be allowed. The majority of the people in this county 

 will live this winter in rooms heated to seventy-five and eighty 

 degrees, often higher ; and the common form of salutation will 

 be, " IIow do you do ? " " Pretty well, except a cold." 

 " How are your family ? " " All well, except colds." The 



