32 Hattie Plum Williams 
morning she carried out her threat by taking the lad home. The 
grandmother was scrubbing the front porch, and she promptly 
applied the cloth, with which she was scrubbing, to the child’s face 
and produced an effect which the teacher pronounced “ satis- 
factory.” 
So far as soap and water are concerned, the Russian German 
home is faultless, but it suffers from the lack of ventilation. The 
winters in Russia are so severe that every crack and crevice of 
the houses is closed to shut out the cold and to conserve the heat; 
and the weather of Nebraska, though milder, is resisted in the 
same way. Moreover the small size of the houses here dis- 
courages ventilation and on account of the risk from drafts, pure 
air becomes almost as dangerous as bad air. It is an easy thing, 
where the sleeping apartments are shut off from the rest of the 
louse, to throw them open at night and leave them thus for half 
the day ; but where there are only one or two rooms in the house, 
the problem becomes more complicated. Again, the people do not 
feel the need of fresh air.2° There is the former, almost uni- 
versal, notion that some especial danger lurks in the night air; 
and that outdoor air is especially bad for sick people. This 
tendency to keep the house closed too tightly results in a faint 
odor attaching to the clothing of the people which is taken by 
those who do not know them to be a sign of soiled garments or 
unbathed bodies. This slight odor is often the basis for un- 
warranted prejudice against an otherwise cleanly people. 
These peculiarities of economy in the use of clean water and 
pure air are the results of environment and quickly improve 
under changed conditions. The younger element among the 
immigrants is less superstitious and more susceptible to suggestion. 
The example of the American homes in which the mothers work, 
the teaching of the schools, and the better type of houses which 
the immigrants acquire after a few years in America, all aid in 
effecting the change. A young miss of fifteen, after hearing a 
health talk by a woman physician before a club of school girls, 
declared: “I can’t stand to sleep with the windows shut. My 
26 The windows in the houses of the German colonists on the Volga are 
not made to open. 
158 
