And when they became scattered abroad
to colder climes, the open fire-place secured a full supply of pure
air. But civilization has increased economies and conveniences far
ahead of the knowledge needed by the common people for their healthful
use. Tight sleeping-rooms, and close, air-tight stoves, are now starving
and poisoning more than one half of this nation. It seems impossible
to make people know their danger. And the remedy for this is the light
of knowledge and intelligence which it is woman's special mission to
bestow, as she controls and regulates the ministries of a home.
The poisoning process is thus exhibited in Mrs. Stowe's "House and
Home Papers," and can not be recalled too often:
"No other gift of God, so precious, so inspiring, is treated with such
utter irreverence and contempt in the calculations of us mortals as
this same air of heaven. A sermon on oxygen, if we had a preacher who
understood the subject, might do more to repress sin than the most
orthodox discourse to show when and how and why sin came. A minister
gets up in a crowded lecture-room, where the mephitic air almost makes
the candles burn blue, and bewails the deadness of the church--the
church the while, drugged by the poisoned air, growing sleepier and
sleepier, though they feel dreadfully wicked for being so.
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