VENTILATION. 137 



design, they would be able to furnish rooms almost as fatal 

 to life as " the black hole of Calcutta." But in spite of all 

 that they can do, the materials will shrink, and no fuel has 

 yet been found, which will burn without any air, so that suffi- 

 cient ventilation is kept up, to prevent such deadly occur- 

 rences. Still they are tolerably successful in keeping out the 

 unfriendly element ; and by the use of huge cooking-stoves 

 with towering ovens, and other salamander contrivances, the 

 little air that can find its way in, is almost as thoroughly 

 cooked, as are the various delicacies destined for the table. 



On reading an account of a run-away slave, who was for 

 a considerable time, closely boxed up, a gentleman remark- 

 ed that if the poor fellow had only known that a renewal of 

 the air was necessary to the support of life, he could not 

 have lived there an hour without suffocation : I have fre- 

 quently thought that if the occupants of the rooms I have 

 been describing, could only know as much, they would be 

 in almost similar danger. 



Bad air, one would think, is bad enough : but when it is 

 heated and dried to an excessive degree, all its original vile- 

 ness is stimulated to greater activity, and thus made doubly 

 injurious by this new element of evil. Not only our private 

 houses, but our churches and school-rooms, our railroad 

 cars, and all our places of public assemblage, are, to a 

 most lamentable degree, either unprovided with any means 

 of ventilation, or, to a great extent, supplied with those 

 which are so wretchedly deficent that they 



"Keep the word of promise to oor ear, 

 And break it to our hope." 



That ultimate degeneracy must surely fpllow such entire 

 disregard of the laws of health, cannot be doubted ; and 

 those who imagine that the physical stamina of a people 

 12* 



