THE FAVORITE POISON OF AMERICA. 285 



And this is the air which four-fifths of our countrymen and 

 countrywomen breathe in their homes, not from necessity, but 

 from choice.* 



This is the air which those who travel by hundreds of thousands 

 in our railroad cars, closed up in winter, and heated with close 

 stoves, breathe for hours or often entire days.f 



This is the air which fills the cabins of closely packed steam- 

 boats, always heated by large stoves, and only half ventilated ; the 

 air breathed by countless numbers both waking or sleeping. 



This is the air no, this is even salubrious compared with the 

 air that is breathed by hundreds and thousands in almost all our 

 crowded lecture-rooms, concert-rooms, public halls, and private as- 

 semblies, all over the country. They are nearly all heated by stoves 

 or furnaces, with very imperfect ventilation, or no ventilation at all. 



Is it too much to call it the national poison, this continual at- 

 mosphere of close stoves, which, whether travelling or at home, we 

 Americans are content to breathe, as if it were the air of Par- 

 adise ? 



We very well know that we have a great many readers who 

 abominate stoves, and whose houses are warmed and ventilated in 

 an excellent manner. But they constitute no appreciable fraction 

 of the vast portion of our countrymen who love stoves fill their 

 houses with them are ignorant of their evils, and think ventilation 

 and fresh air physiological chimeras, which may be left to the 

 speculations of doctors and learned men. 



* "We have said that the present generation of stove-reared farmers' 

 daughters are pale and delicate in appearance. We may add that the most 

 healthy and blooming looking American women, are those of certain fami- 

 lies where exercise, and fresh air, and ventilation, are matters of conscience 

 and duty here as in Europe. 



f Why the ingenuity of clever Yankees has not been directed to warm- 

 ing railroad cars (by means of steam conveyed through metal tubes, running 

 tinder the floor, and connected with flexible coupling pipes,) we cannot well 

 understand. It would be at once cheaper than the present mode, (since 

 waste steam could be used,) and far more wholesome. Railroad cars have, 

 it is true, ventilators at the top for the escape of foul air, but no apertures 

 in the floor for the inlet of fresh air ! It is like emptying a barrel without 

 a vent 



