82 DUST AND ITS DANGERS. 



trie light beams show a blue or gray cloud on 

 most occasions where they pierce the dust-la- 

 den air. Now, it is a fact that in most theatres 

 at least there is no efficient means made use 

 of to get this accumulating dust out of the 

 auditorium. The coarser dirt is swept up 

 more or less frequently in all of them, and 

 carried off, but the finer dust is usually simply 

 stirred up again in a perfunctory and wholly 

 useless way from the seats to settle back again 

 into the plush or the carpets, to be stirred up 

 anew by the incoming and outgoing audience. 

 The fact is, the upholstering of the chairs of 

 public assembly-rooms ought never to be done 

 with plush or other rough fabric which catches 

 and holds the dust. The floors should not be 

 carpeted, as there are plenty of other whole- 

 some substitutes, and both the ventilation and 

 the daily cleansing ought to be done under 

 some intelligent direction, so that these places 

 need not continue to be, as so many of them 

 now are, veritable death-traps and distributing 

 centres of bacterial disease. While there are, 

 of course, exceptions to the condition of affairs 

 which has here been described, the exceptions 



