g upon the senses foulness, pain,
and inconvenience, that it was only by being drugged with gin and
opium that their miserable inhabitants could find heart to drag on
life from day to day. He had himself tried the experiment of reforming
a drunkard by taking him from one of these loathsome dens, and
enabling him to rent a tenement in a block of model lodging-houses
which had been built under his supervision. The young man had been a
designer of figures for prints; he was of a delicate frame, and a
nervous, susceptible temperament. Shut in one miserable room with his
wife and little children, without the possibility of pure air, with
only filthy, fetid water to drink, with the noise of other miserable
families resounding through the thin partitions, what possibility was
there of doing anything except by the help of stimulants, which for a
brief hour lifted him above the perception of these miseries? Changed
at once to a neat flat, where, for the same rent as his former den, he
had three good rooms, with water for drinking, house-service, and
bathing freely supplied, and the blessed sunshine and air coming in
through windows well arranged for ventilation, he became in a few
weeks a new man. In the charms of the little spot which he could call
home, its quiet, its order, his former talent came back to him, and he
found strength, in pure air and pure water and those purer thoughts of
which they are the emblems, to abandon burning and stupefying
stimulants.

The influence of dwelling-houses for good or for evil--their influence
on the brain, the nerves, and, through these, on the heart and
life--is one of those things that cannot be enough pondered by those
who build houses to sell or rent.

Something more generous ought to inspire a man than merely the
percentage which he can get for his money. He who would build houses
should think a little on the subject. He should reflect what houses
are for, what they may be made to do for human beings. The great
majority of houses in cities are not built by the indwellers
themselves; they are built for them by those who invest their money in
this way, with little other thought than the percentage which the
investment will return.

For persons of ample fortune there are, indeed, palatial residences,
with all that wealth can do to render life delightful. But in that
class of houses which must be the lot of the large majority, those
which must be chosen by young men in the beginning o