54 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



close, iron stove destroys the vitality of the air. How sleepy 

 and dull we all are when the fire is first kindled in the 

 autumn. There is very little ventilation in our rooms thus 

 heated. The air is made impure and unwholesome by repeated 

 use. There is no question about it. There has been a decided 

 lowering of the public health since tight stoves came in use. 

 There is no denying the fact that the average physical vigor of 

 the people abroad, especially the women, is greater than with 

 us. The difference of climate will not account for it. It is 

 owing largely to two causes. The people abroad live a great 

 deal more in the open air than we do. They walk more. I 

 saw English ladies in Switzerland that considered it a trifle to 

 walk twenty-five miles a day. 



The other cause of better health abroad is, that when in-doors 

 they do not live in hot and close rooms as we do. For seven 

 months of the year we must have some artificial heat. We 

 have fallen into the habit of heating to excess, and an immense 

 amount of sickness and disease results from it. But what 

 remedy can one propose ? The regulating the heat of the room 

 by a thermometer would, at least, admonish us when our rooms 

 were too hot. Putting suitable ventilators into our chimneys 

 would lessen the evil in a measure. The use of open stoves 

 would lessen it still more. But the expense ; who can afford 

 an open fire, with wood at ten dollars a cord ? Very many can 

 afford it better than pay a doctor's bill or see consumption 

 wasting away the lives of their family. At that price we can 

 afford to learn economy in the use of fuel. As a people we are 

 exceedingly wasteful. There is such an abundance of every- 

 thing around us, that we are accustomed to use the best and 

 throw tlie rest away. It is a common remark, and it is nearly 

 true, that a French or- Italian family lives on what an American 

 family would throw away. It is especially true of fuel. We 

 are excessively wasteful of it. Many a farmer will cut down 

 beautiful trees and convert them into fuel for his winter's fire, 

 when there is useless rubbish enough piled up, or rather scattered 

 about his house and barn and fences, to keep his family warm 

 all winter, and the removal of which would turn his premises 

 from slovenliness to neatness. 



I learned something last winter about economy in fuel. I 

 was keeping house in Rome. I bought my wood by the pound, 



