"Little Jim, who, fresh from his afternoon's ramble in the fields,
last evening said his prayers dutifully, and lay down to sleep in a
most Christian frame, this morning sits up in bed with his hair
bristling with crossness, strikes at his nurse, and declares he won't
say his prayers--that he don't want to be good. The simple difference
is, that the child, having slept in a close box of a room, his brain
all night fed by poison, is in a mild state of moral insanity. Delicate
women remark that it takes them till eleven or twelve o'clock to get
up their strength in the morning. Query, Do they sleep with closed
windows and doors, and with heavy bed-curtains?
"The houses built by our ancestors were better ventilated in certain
respects than modern ones, with all their improvements. The great
central chimney, with its open fire-places in the different rooms,
created a constant current which carried off foul and vitiated air.
In these days, how common is it to provide rooms with only a flue for
a stove! This flue is kept shut in summer, and in winter opened only
to admit a close stove, which burns away the vital portion of the air
quite as fast as the occupants breathe it away.
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