AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
getting up these articles, turn to account for 
cushions, coverings, etc., a variety of mate¬ 
rials, such as dresses, bed-spreads, and com¬ 
forters, &c., that have been accidentally 
soiled or injured in some part. Any com¬ 
mon chest or trunk may be covered in the 
same way. 
We have seen a fine plaster cast of the 
“ Child at Prayer,” standing upon a very 
neat pedestal that, if closely examined, would 
be found to consist of a square soap-box, 
with pieces of a “ comforter ” upon the sides 
and top, for a frame-work, and the cover, 
quilted cushion, and fringe or flounces, sup¬ 
plied from a white spread or counterpane. 
We might add several other examples of a 
similar character, but will leave the subject 
to our lady correspondents. A plain descrip¬ 
tion of any convenient household article, 
which is not adopted by all your neighbors, 
will furnish useful suggestions to at least 
some of the thousands of readers of the 
American Agriculturist elsewhere. 
POPULAR FALLACIES—MORNING WALKS. 
Hall’s Journal of Health, a monthly pe¬ 
riodical, published in this city, at one dollar 
a year, contains more practical common- 
sense articles, written in a plain popular 
style, than any similar work we are ac¬ 
quainted with. It aims at uprooting popular 
fallacies in regard to health, by applying to 
them common-sense reasonings, adapted to 
the popular mind. We have just read 
through the April number, and, had we space, 
would copy the whole for the benefit of our 
readers, whom we advise to become subscri¬ 
bers to that journal. Though somewhat long, 
we will insert the first article, with the en¬ 
dorsement that it is not only compatible with 
reason, but it agrees entirely with our own 
experience and observation. A morning 
walk or much exercise before bracing up the 
system with a meal, has always unfitted us 
for strong mental exercise for that day!" We 
have felt this more sensibly when, as often 
happens, we have been detained upon the 
water by the late arrival of a night steamer. 
The coolness of the water is peculiarly fit¬ 
ted to condense near its surface the malaria 
and noxious vapors from the higher aenel re¬ 
gions. But read what the Journal of Health 
says : 
It is a great mistake, that a morning walk 
or other form of exercise before breakfast 
is healthful; the malaria which rests on the 
earth about sunrise in summer, when taken 
into the lungs and stomach, which are equal¬ 
ly debilitated with other portions of the 
body from the long fast since supper, is very 
readily absorbed and enters the circulation 
within an houror two, poisoning the blood, and 
laying the foundation for troublesome dis¬ 
eases ; while in winter the same debilitated 
condition of these vital organs readily allows 
the blood to be chilled, and thus renders the 
system susceptible of taking cold, with all 
its varied and too often disastrous results. 
I do not wish to dismiss the statement 
which I have made with a simple assertion. 
The denial of what is almost universally 
considered a truth so palpable, as scarcely 
to admit of proof, may well challenge in¬ 
vestigation. Besides, l do not want the reg¬ 
ular readers of the Journal to have their 
memories crowded with abstract precepts 
and pithy saws about health ; I desire them, 
on the contrary, to become masters of gen¬ 
eral principles, to know and to understand 
the reason of things ; then, these things can 
be remembered without an effort, while the 
principle being known, a very varied applica¬ 
tion is easily made and practically observed, 
a striking example of which is given in the 
March number, in reference to the prompt 
cure of poisons and bites and stings of in¬ 
sects and reptiles by the employment of 
familiar articles of kitchen use. 
What 1 shall say on the subject of morning 
exercise is intended to apply mainly to all 
sedenatry persons, those whose employment 
is chiefly in-doors. And here 1 will simply 
appeal to the actual experience of any se¬ 
dentary reader if he has not before now no¬ 
ticed when he has been induced from some 
extraordinary reason to take active exercise 
before breakfast on some bright summer 
morning, that he felt rather a less relish for 
his food than usual; in fact had no appetite 
at ali; there was a certain sickishness of 
feeling, with a sensation of debility by no 
means agreeable. It will be said here, this 
was because it was unusual, that if followed 
up these feelings would gradually disappear. 
If that is so, it is but a negative proof, for 
the system naturally has an inherent resist¬ 
ing power called into action by hurtful ap¬ 
pliances. A teaspoon of brandy will pro¬ 
duce slight symptoms of lightness of head 
in some persons if taken before breakfast, 
but if continued, the same amount will, after 
a while, produce no appreciable discomfort; 
the cases are precisely parallel; that a man 
gets used to drinking brandy is no proof that 
it does not injure him. 
Another person will remind me that the 
early air of a summer’s morning seems so 
balmy and refreshing, so cool and delightful, 
that it can not be otherwise than healthful. 
That is begging the question ; it is a state¬ 
ment known by scientific observers to be not 
simply untrue, but to be absolutely false. It 
is a common observation in New-Orleans, 
where I lived a number of years, by those 
who remain in the city during the raging of 
the yellow lever, that when the air of morn¬ 
ings and evenings appears to be unusually 
delicious, so clear and cool and refreshing, 
it is a forerunner of an increase of the epi¬ 
demic. Like the deceitful Syren, it destroys 
while it lures. 
The fruitful cause of fevers and other epi¬ 
demics in southern climes is the decompo¬ 
sition of vegetable matter; the ranker and 
more dense the vegetation, the more deadly 
are the diseases of that locality; this de¬ 
composition cannot take place without moist¬ 
ure and heat approaching ninety degrees of 
Fahrenheit. We are all familiar with the 
sad fact, that thousands upon thousands who 
have endured the hardships of mining in Cal¬ 
ifornia have taken the “ Isthmus fever ” on 
their return, and lingered and died. From 
the first discovery of gold in the Sacramento 
valley the newspaper press was united in its 
cautions against the almost certain death at¬ 
tendant on sleeping at Chagres a single 
night, and even now it is considered one of 
the most important effects of the railroad 
finished across the isthmus , that passengers 
do not land at all at Aspinwall, but get into 
the cars at once and cross to Panama, where 
a steamer is always in waiting to receive pas¬ 
sengers for San Francisco, thus avoiding a 
night on the isthmus. Before the removal 
of the landing from Chagres to Aspinwall, 
it became common to make arrangements to 
remain on board the steamers until the pas¬ 
sengers were ready to start immediately for 
Panama. All these precautions forced them¬ 
selves on public attention. Now why was 
all this 1 Simply to avoid breathing the con¬ 
centrated malaria arising from such immeas¬ 
urable quantities of decaying vegetation 
shooting out of swamps and stagnant marsh¬ 
es, ami so dense as to make penetration 
by man or beast impracticable. 
The night was more dreaded than the day, 
for the following reason : The great heat of 
the sun caused a rapid evaporation of the 
malaria, rarifying it to such a degree that it 
almost instantaneously ascended to the up¬ 
per atmosphere after the first morning hours; 
but in the course of the day, when the sun 
declines in power, these vapors gi^dually 
condense, get heavier, and fail to the earth, 
thus giving the layer of air within fifteen 
feet of the surface, a density and concentra¬ 
tion of malaria malignantly fatal; while in 
the morning this density is not diminished 
until the sun has gained some power. 
The older citizens of Charleston will 
tell you, that in early years, it was certain 
death for a stranger to sleep in the city one 
night, that during the most violent ragings of 
epidemics, citizens themselves would not go 
to town to attend to necesary business, ex¬ 
cept at noon-day, the hottest portion of the 
twenty-four hours, because, then the malaria 
was most ratified and found by observation 
to be least hurtful. Few knew the reason, 
but the fact was so palpable, that its proprie? 
ty enforced practical attention 
In the old books which treat of the terrible 
plagues which depopulated the large cities in 
the middle and earlier ages, the people who 
could not leave town, retreated to the upper 
stories of their dwellings, and would not 
come down to purchase necessary market¬ 
ing from the country people, but would let 
down baskets by ropes,»and draw up their 
provisions, and thus escaped with impunity, 
to a considerable extent; these were the 
practical results which followed the observa 
tion of actual facts, by a comparatively rude 
and unthinking age, and we unfortunates of 
the nineteenth century, who cannot leave 
the city in summer, but must have our,noses 
always at the grindstone, whose mills stop 
when absent for a single day ; we doctors, 
who never have a leisure day or night, or 
hour, who always have a greater or less 
number who are looking up to us for life-; 
looking to the hour of our anticipated visit 
as the happiest of the whole twenty-four ; 
and we poorer Editors, who could not go if 
we would, otherwise our children would go 
supperless to bed ; I say, we all may gather 
a practical lesson of great value from the 
customs of those of a far ruder age, a lesson 
which if learned well, and acted on, would 
save to us many a darling child, many a life’s 
only hope, many a poor heart’s only comfort 
—thus 
Never allow your children to leave the 
second or third story in the morning until 
they have had a plain hearty breakfast; and 
send them upstairs within half-an-hour after 
sun-down, or give them their supper at sun¬ 
down : these observances ought to be ad¬ 
hered to from May until October in the 
North, and from April to November in the 
South. A rigid attention to this, would pre¬ 
vent at once, half the diarrheas and summer 
complaints, and croups which desolate our 
hearths and hearts so often in summer time 
in the city. 
It is a striking argument for the perversity 
of human nature, and one which oftenforces 
itself upon the attention of observant men, 
that we bolt a concentrated untruth without 
wincing, while what is true, with all its sim¬ 
plicity and beauty, and usefulness, is dis¬ 
puted inch by inch, with a suspiciousness 
and a pertinacity most remarkable. 
So it will be, I have no doubt, with the 
sentiment I have advanced ; instead of being 
received, and acted upon, many a mind will 
be busied in finding an argument against it, 
instead of considering the force of the proof 
offered for it, just as we all many times have 
observed when ordinary minds are engaged in 
