cape of every
foul and vitiated particle of air through one opening, while a
constant supply of fresh outdoor air is admitted by another. In
winter, this outdoor air must pass through some process by which it is
brought up to a temperate warmth.

Take a single room, and suppose on one side a current of outdoor air
which has been warmed by passing through the air chamber of a modern
furnace. Its temperature need not be above sixty-five,--it answers
breathing purposes better at that. On the other side of the room let
there be an open wood or coal fire. One cannot conceive the purposes
of warmth and ventilation more perfectly combined.

Suppose a house with a great central hall, into which a current of
fresh, temperately warmed air is continually pouring. Each chamber
opening upon this hall has a chimney up whose flue the rarefied air is
constantly passing, drawing up with it all the foul and poisonous
gases. That house is well ventilated, and in a way that need bring no
dangerous draughts upon the most delicate invalid. For the better
securing of privacy in sleeping-rooms, we have seen two doors
employed, one of which is made with slats, like a window-blind, so
that air is freely transmitted without exposing the interior.

When we speak of fresh air, we insist on the full rigor of the term.
It must not be the air of a cellar, heavily laden with the poisonous
nitrogen of turnips and cabbages, but good, fresh, outdoor air from a
cold-air pipe, so placed as not to get the lower stratum near the
ground, where heavy damps and exhalations collect, but high up, in
just the clearest and most elastic region.

The conclusion of the whole matter is, that as all of man's and
woman's peace and comfort, all their love, all their amiability, all
their religion, have got to come to them, while they live in this
world, through the medium of the brain,--and as black, uncleansed
blood acts on the brain as a poison, and as no other than black,
uncleansed blood can be got by the lungs out of impure air,--the
first object of the man who builds a house is to secure a pure and
healthy atmosphere therein.

Therefore, in allotting expenses, set this down as a _must-be_: "Our
house must have fresh air,--everywhere, at all times, winter and
summer." Whether we have stone facings or no; whether our parlor has
cornices or marble mantles or no; whether our doors are machine-made
or hand-made. All our fixtures shall be of the plainest and simplest