Green-Mountain freeman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1844-1884, 1877-12-19
Thr family Cirtle.


Never was an apostle more needed. The
people are setting in darkness for want of
him. He ought to journey up and down
the land, through the length and breadth
of it proclaiming the way of the Sun, and
crying aloud: MAKE We his paths
straight. Open your windows, for why
will ye dep
In the course of last summer and fall
was in some twenty or thirty New Eng
land tpwns-in Massachusetts, in New
Hampshire, in Vermont | drove every
day from twelve to eighteen miles, up and
down the hills, through tie beautiful val
lpys, along the dancing water-courses. |
know all the different types of the rural
New England home, from the neat, pre-,
else, and ornate house of the welI-to do
man in the manufacturing town 10 the
gray, weather beaten, lchen- grown old
house of the poorest farmer among the
hills. | know them all love them all
with that loyalty to the soil which | some
times think is stronger in the New Eng
lander than in any other American. But
| iourneyed among them last autumn
with an ever-increasing sense of pain.
Ninety out of hundred of these houses
are houses which no one familiar with the
laws of health can look at without seeing
at glance that the people who live in
them cannot be we'll. The average New
England house to-day has not more than
two or three of its blinds open. 1t is II
species of cellar, Some of its rooms are
worse than a cellar, which has its door
opened at least once or twice day and Il
few whiffs of air let in. In the houses
which are not provided with blinds, green
paper curtains are hung inside; and these
are kept down from morning till night,
week in and week out, in all the rooms
except the kitchen.
But the shut blinds, bad as they are, are
not the worst thing in the New England
villages and towns. The trees are worse
The blinds will of necessity get opened
once in II wilhelm spring and fall, for
the house cleaning, if no oflener, but the
trees which stand close to the house, and
shuts off every ray of direct, full sunshine
from its windows, doors, WALL making il
not only dark, which is gloomy and un.
wholesome, but damp, which is poisonous
and deadly-the tree is immovable. II
grows denser and higher and broader
every year; shuts out every year, more
and more sunshine; sheds every year
more and more damp moisture from its
leaves.
l believe it would not be an exaggera.
ton to say more than three-fourths of the
houses in every New England village are
shaded by trees to an extent that canno
fail seriously to injuro the health of al
persons living in them. | am sure thai
this is true of the village along the lines
of the river meadows. think it is true
of the hill towns almost equally; for tina
town where | most love to stay lies thir
teen hundred feet above the sea, and We
its main street is shaded might Say
shrouded by double row of great suga
NAPLES, which shut out the sunlight from
the front of all the houses almost as eff
fectually as blankets would, hung up Il
their windows. | have driven through
many miles of village streets in the Con
necticut River meadows, where house at
ter house was not only sunless on its front
but looked dark and sodden, rs if it ha,
been in soak for years. So it had. Waite
is not the only thing that you can soak in
Hang cloth out in moist, foggy air al
night, and you can wiring drops Of waite
out of il in the morning. Let boards Ii
long in damp place, and everybod,
knows they will decay. When board
stand upright, built into the house, the
are no less sensitive to damp than the
were before. Surround the house witt
damp. dealing trees, and slowly, surely tn
boards are dampened through. They will
last and not actually rot away for II centur
or more-just as the owner of them ma
live for the best part of II century in
damp and sunless room behind them; bu
the house will feel chilly and smell must
from garnet to cellar. AS fol the man
what rheumatism he will have and hoy
wthered and decrepit he looksl A hale
hearty, full faced. forid old man in New
England is sight you may journey week
, without seeing Yet in other countries
is thing of every day. And it is not t
be charged to the stock. The New Eng
land stock is of the hardest, else ther
would not be old men at all, under sucl
unfavoring condition Of hard work, vigor
Gus climate, no sunshine, and 80 little fres
beef 1t is thankless task to attack tn
trees; dangerous one in some communi
ties. have known terrible neighborhoo
teuds to arise by reason of the selectme
cutting down a tree. The trees are tn
pride of the village. Strangers drivin