E HOME UNHEALTHY. BY HARRIET MARTINEAU.

Emperor Yao (very many years B.C.) established a certain custom, which was
followed, we are told, by his successors on the throne of China. The
custom was this. Outside the hall-door of his palace, he suspended a
tablet and a gong; and if one among his subjects felt himself able to
suggest a good idea to his ruler, or wished to admonish him of any error
in his ways, the critic paid a visit to the palace, wrote what he had to
say upon the tablet, battered at the gong, and ran away. The Emperor came
out; and then, unless it happened that some scapegrace of a schoolboy had
annoyed him by superadding a fly-away knock to a contemptuous
hieroglyphic, he gravely profited by any hint the tablets might convey.
Not unlike honest, patriarchal Yao is our British Public. It is summoned
out to read inscriptions at its door, left there by all who have advice to
give or faults to deprecate. The successors of Yao, finding upon their
score so many conflicting tales, soon substituted for the gong five
instruments of music. It was required, then, that the monitor should
distinguish, by the instrument upon which he performed his summons, what
particular department of imperial duties it might be to which he desired
to call attention. Now not five but fifty voices summon _our_ royal
public. One man courts attention with a dulcet strain, one brays, one
harps upon a string, another drums. And among those who have of late been
busiest in pointing errors out, and drumming at the public's door to have
them rectified, are they who profess concern about the Public Health.

For the writer who now proposes to address to you, O excellent Public,
through these pages, a Series of Practical Hints as to How to make Home
Unhealthy, we would not have you think that he means to be in any respect
so troublesome as those Sanitary Instructors. The lion on your knocker
gives him confidence; he will leave no disconcerting messages; he will
seek to come into your parlor as a friend. A friend he is; for, with a
polite sincerity, he will maintain in all his arguments that what you do
is what ought always to be done. He knows well that you are not foolish,
and perceives, therefore, what end you have in view. He sees that you are
impressed deeply with a conviction of the vanity of life; that you desire,
accordingly, to prove your wisdom by exhibiting contempt for that which
philosopher after philosopher forbids a thoughtful man