step farther. Better,
far better, the old houses of the olden time, with their great roaring
fires, and their bed-rooms where the snow came in and the wintry winds
whistled. Then, to be sure, you froze your back while you burned your
face, your water froze nightly in your pitcher, your breath congealed
in ice-wreaths on the blankets, and you could write your name on the
pretty snow-wreath that had sifted in through the window-cracks. But you
woke full of life and vigor,--you looked out into whirling snow-storms
without a shiver, and thought nothing of plunging through drifts as high
as your head on your daily way to school. You jingled in sleighs, you
snowballed, you lived in snow like a snow-bird, and your blood coursed
and tingled, in full tide of good, merry, real life, through your
veins,--none of the slow-creeping, black blood which clogs the brain and
lies like a weight on the vital wheels!

* * * * *

"Mercy upon us, papa!" said Jennie, "I hope we need not go back to such
houses!"

"No, my dear," I replied. "I only said that such houses were better than
those which are all winter closed by double windows and burnt-out
air-tight stoves."

* * * * *

The perfect house is one in which there is a constant escape of every
foul and vitiated particle of air through one opening, while a constant
supply of fresh out-door air is admitted by another. In winter, this
out-door 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 out-door 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, lik