hat very well, because every such current is a
draught; one cuts into our legs, one gnaws about our necks, and all our
backs are cold. We are in the condition of a pious man in Fox's "Martyrs,"
about whom I used to read with childish reverence: that after a great deal
of frying, during which he had not been turned by the Inquisition-Soyer,
he lifted up his voice in verse:

"This side enough is toasted;
Then turn me, tyrant, and eat,
And see whether raw or roasted
I make the better meat."

We, all of us, over our Christmas fires, present this choice of raw or
roast, and we don't thank your principles of ventilation for it. Then say
these pertinacious people, that they also disapprove of draughts; but they
don't seem to mind boring holes in a gentleman's floor, or knocking
through the sacred walls of home. This is their plan. They say, that you
should have, if possible, a pipe connected with the air without, passing
behind the cheeks of your stove, and opening under your fire, about, on,
or close before your hearth. They say, that from this source the fire will
be supplied so well, that it will no longer suck in draughts over your
shoulders, and between your legs, from remote corners of the room. They
say, moreover, that if this aperture be large enough, it will supply all
the fresh air needed in your room, to replace that which has ascended and
passed out, through a hole which you are to make in your chimney near the
ceiling. They say, that an up-draught will clear this air away so quietly
that you will not need even a valve; though you may have one fitted and
made ornamental at a trifling cost. They would recommend you to make
another hole in the wall opposite your chimney, near the ceiling also, to
establish a more effectual current in the upper air. Then, they say, you
will have a fresh air, and no draughts. Fresh air, yes, at the expense of
a hole in the floor, and two holes in the wall. We might get fresh air,
gentlemen, on a much larger scale by pulling the house down. They say, you
should not mind the holes. Windows are not architectural beauties, yet we
like them for admitting light; and some day it may strike us that the want
of ventilators is a neighbor folly to the want of windows.

This they suggest as the best method of adapting our old houses to their
new ideas. New houses they would have so built as to include this system
of ventilation in their first construction, and so include