The morning star and Catholic messenger. [volume] (New Orleans [La.]) 1868-1881, 1871-04-23
NIsCELLANY.

of harm aud loss.
NIsCELLANY
KEEP Your MOUTH SuUT.-A few years ago
George Catlin wrote pamphlet, which was
| lated in most other European languages, on
| the importance of breathing through the nose,
| in order to preserve health. He has made OBJ
nations, finding that individuals who habitual-
| ly keep their mouths open ore never very
healthy or long lived. Afterward, he observed
the same thing during sojourn of many
| years among the Indians of North and South
America; aud he has come to the conclusion
| that there exists definite law for breathing
| and sleeping, obedience to which must exercise
| the most beneficial influence on the well-being
| of the human race, and which cannot he too
strongly insisted upon. Mothers, and all 9TH
ers who have children to educate, should be
may inculcate upon their children and pupils
the golden lesson contained in these four
| words, Keep your mouth shut. Hitherto this ad-
vice has been considered only as u moral in
junction, to restrain children from talking too
much; but Catlin prescribes it literally and in
sists that air should only pass in out of the
lungs by the nose, except in the act of speaking
or singing. He is SO enthusiastic concerning
the great value of this simply hygienic recipe
that he closes the book with the following re-
marks: elf had n million dollars to sDend
in value, would spend it to print four mil
lions of my books, and distribute them among
four million mothers, rich as we'll rs poor. l
would not obtain therefor any monument or
decoration of nobility but would-which is
much better-have obtained the peculiarly
joyful satisfaction that II had left posterity
legacy Of much higher higher value than han, money
the advice is good. The air, by being inhaled
through the nose, is more perfectly freed from
dust, and in winter reaches the lungs in u
warmer condition than when inhaled by the
mouth (Which is of great Importance to peo-
pie with weak lungs). 1t keeps the lower for
ward portion of the brain cool, when inhaled
by the nose; while it dries the saliva, and thus
interferes with digestion, when inhaled by the
mouth, and those who sleep with their mouths
shut will not have that dry, unpleasant taste
when they awake in the morninV, and are less
subject to that nocturnal misunderstanding.
CHURCHES IN GENoA.AWe took COM
misionaire, q respectable looking man in a
cloak, who said his name was Salvador Rosa;
and he engaged to show us whatever was in
teresting in Genoa. In the first place he took
us through narrow streets to an old church, the
name of which have forgotten, and, indeed,
its peculiar features but know that found
ror being encased in polished marble of va
rous kinds and colors, its ceiling painted, and
its chapels adorned with pictures. However,
this church was dazzled out of sight by the
cathedral of San Lorenzo, to which we were
afterwards conducted, whose exterior front is
covered with alternate slabs of black and
white marble, which were brought, either in
whole or in part, from Jerusalem. Within
there was prodigious richness of precious
marbles, and u pillar, if mistake not, from
Solomon's Temple; and picture of the Virgin
by St. Luke, and Others by old masters set in
superb marble frames, within the arches of the
chapels. l used to try to imagine how the
English cathedrals must have looked in their
prineval glory, before the Reformation and be-
fore the whitewash of Cromwelrs time had
overlaid their marble pillars; but never i'm
agined anything at al! approaching what my
eyes now beheld-this sheen of polished and
variegated marble covering every inch of its
walls; this glow of brilliant frescoes all over
the roof and up within the domes; these beau
tiful pictures by great masters, painted for the
places which they now occupied, and making
actual portion of the edifice this wealth of
silver, gold and gems, that adorned the snrines
burned, aud were kept burning, 1 suppose,
from years end to years end in short, there
is no imagining or remembering hundredth
part of the rich details And even the cathe-
dral (though give it up as indescribable) is
nothing at all in comparison with a church to
winch the comnlisionaire afterwards led u.s. u
church that had been built four or five hum
dred years ago, by pirate, in expiation for his
sins, and out of the profit of his rapine. This
last editice, in its interior, absolutely shone
with FURNISHED gold and glowed with pictures;
valuable were the marbles out of which they
were wrought; it's columns and pillars were of
incopceivable costliness its pavement was o
mosaic of wonderful beauty, and there were
four twisted pillars made out Of stalactites
Perhaps the best way to form some dim con-
ception of it is to fancy a little casket, inlaid
inside with precious stones, 80 that there shall
not o hairs breadth be left -precious-stoned,
and then to conceive this little bit of q casket
increased to the magnitude of great church,
without losing anything of the excessive glory
that was compressed into it's original small
compass; but all it's pretty lustre made sub
lime by the consequent immensely. At any
rate, nobody who has not seen o church like
this can imagine what u gorgeous religion it
was that reared it.-HdCth0rne's First impress
8iOnS.
PREVENTION OF NOISE IN WORKSHOPS