ter of the atmosphere.

In the winter, the windows are calked and listed, the throat of the
chimney built up with a tight brick wall, and a close stove is
introduced to help burn out the vitality of the air. In a sitting-room
like this, from five to ten persons will spend about eight months of
the year, with no other ventilation than that gained by the casual
opening and shutting of doors. Is it any wonder that consumption
every year sweeps away its thousands?--that people are suffering
constant chronic ailments,--neuralgia, nervous dyspepsia, and all the
host of indefinite bad feelings that rob life of sweetness and flower
and bloom?

A recent writer raises the inquiry, whether the community would not
gain in health by the demolition of all dwelling-houses. That is, he
suggests the question, whether the evils from foul air are not so
great and so constant that they countervail the advantages of shelter.
Consumptive patients far gone have been known to be cured by long
journeys, which have required them to be day and night in the open
air. Sleep under the open heaven, even though the person be exposed to
the various accidents of weather, has often proved a miraculous
restorer after everything else had failed. But surely, if simple fresh
air is so healing and preserving a thing, some means might be found to
keep the air in a house just as pure and vigorous as it is outside.

An article in the May number of "Harpers' Magazine" presents drawings
of a very simple arrangement by which any house can be made thoroughly
self-ventilating. Ventilation, as this article shows, consists in two
things,--a perfect and certain expulsion from the dwelling of all foul
air breathed from the lungs or arising from any other cause, and the
constant supply of pure air.

One source of foul air cannot be too much guarded against,--we mean
imperfect gas-pipes. A want of thoroughness in execution is the sin of
our American artisans, and very few gas-fixtures are so thoroughly
made that more or less gas does not escape and mingle with the air of
the dwelling. There are parlors where plants cannot be made to live,
because the gas kills them; and yet their occupants do not seem to
reflect that an air in which a plant cannot live must be dangerous for
a human being. The very clemency and long-suffering of Nature to those
who persistently violate her laws is one great cause why men are,
physically speaking, such sinners as they are. If foul air po