286 RURAL ARCHITECTURE. 



And so, every other face that one meets in America, has a 

 ghostly paleness about it, that would make a European stare.* 



What is to be done ? " Americans will have stoves." They 

 suit the country, especially the new country; they are cheap, labor- 

 saving, clean. If the more enlightened and better informed throw 

 them aside, the great bulk of the people will not. Stoves are, we 

 are told, in short, essentially democratic and national. 



We answer, let us veniila/te our rooms, and learn to live more in 

 the open air. If our countrymen will take poison in, with every 

 breath which they inhale in their houses and all their .public gather- 

 ings, let them dilute it largely, and they may escape from a part at 

 least of the evils of taking it in such strong doses. 



We have not space here to show in detail the best modes of ven- 

 tilating now in use. ,- But they may be, found described" in several 

 works, especially devoted to the subject, published lately. In our 

 volume on Countrt Houses, we have briefly shown, not only the 

 principles of warming rooms, but the most simple and complete 

 modes of ventilation, — from Arnott's chimney valve, which may 

 for a small cost be easily placed in the chimney flue of any room, ■ 

 to Emerson's more complete apparatus, by which the largest apart- 

 ments, or every room in the largest house, may be warmed and 

 ventilated at the same time, in the most complete and satisfactory 

 manner. 



We assure our readers that we are the more in earnest upon 

 this subjedt, because they are so apathetic. As they would shake 

 a man about falling into that state of deUghtful numbness which 

 precedes freezing to death, all the more vigorously in proportion- to 

 his' own indifference and unconsciousness to his sad' state, so we are 

 the more emphatic in what we have said, because we see the na- 

 tional poison begins to work, and the nation is insensible. 



Pkle countrymen and countrywomen, rouse yourselves ! Con- 

 sider that God has given us an atmosphere of pure, salubrious, 

 health^giving air, 45 miles high, aad—^mtilate your houses. 



* We ougit not, perhaps, to include the Germans and Russians. They 

 also love stoves, and the poison of bad air indoors, and therefore have not 

 the look of health of other European nations, though they live far more in 

 the open air than we do. ' 



