Theatres and concert-rooms
are so foul that only reckless people continue to visit them. Twelve
hours in a railway-car exhausts one, not by the journeying, but because
of the devitalized air. While crossing the ocean in a Cunard steamer,
I was amazed that men who knew enough to construct such ships did not
know enough to furnish air to the passengers. The distress of
sea-sickness is greatly intensified by the sickening air of the ship.
Were carbonic acid _only black_, what a contrast there would be
between our hotels in their elaborate ornament!"
"Some time since I visited an establishment where one hundred and fifty
girls, in a single room, were engaged in needle-work. Pale-faced, and
with low vitality and feeble circulation, they were unconscious that
they were breathing air that at once produced in me dizziness and a
sense of suffocation. If I had remained a week with, them, I should,
by reduced vitality, have become unconscious of the vileness of the
air!"
There is a prevailing prejudice against _night air_ as unhealthful
to be admitted into sleeping-rooms, which is owing wholly to sheer
ignorance.
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