like them, are vocal
with ethereal tones; their breath is "the sweet south, stealing across a
bed of violets," and that's not poisonous, I fancy. Well, I believe the
chemists have, as yet, not detected any difference between a man's breath,
and a woman's; therefore, neither of them can be hurtful. But let us grant
the whole position. Breath is poisonous, but nature made it so; nature
intended it to be so. Nature made man a social animal, and, therefore,
designed that many breaths should be commingled. Why do you, lovers of the
natural, object to that arrangement?

Now let us glance at the means adopted to get rid of this our breath, this
breath of which our words are made, libeled as poisonous. Ventilation is
of two kinds, mechanical and physical. I will say something about each.

Mechanical ventilation is that which machinery produces. One of the first
recorded ventilators of this kind, was not much more extravagant in its
charges upon house-room, than some of which we hear in 1850. In 1663, H.
Schmitz published the scheme of a great fanner, which, descending through
the ceiling, moved to and fro pendulum-wise, within a mighty slit. The
movement of the fanner was established by a piece of clockwork more simple
than compact: it occupied a complete chamber overhead, and was set in
noisy motion by a heavy weight. The weight ran slowly down, pulling its
rope until it reached the parlor floor; so that a gentleman incautiously
falling asleep under it after his dinner, might awake to find himself a
pancake. Since that time we have had no lack of ingenuity at work on
forcing pumps, and sucking-pumps, and screws. The screws are admirable, on
account of the unusually startling nature, now and then, of their results.
Not long ago, a couple of fine screws were adapted to a public building;
one was to take air out, the other was to turn air in. The first screw,
unexpectedly perverse, wheeled its air inward; so did the second, but
instead of directing its draught upward, it blew down with a great gust of
contempt upon the horrified experimentalist. There is something of a screw
principle in those queer little wheels fastened occasionally in our
windows, and on footmen's hats--query, are those the ventilating hats?--the
rooms are as much ventilated by these little tins as they would be by an
air from "Don Giovanni." I will say nothing about pumps; nor, indeed, need
we devote more space to mechanical contrivances, since it is from othe