The National tribune. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1877-1917, 1889-02-14
Written for THE NATIONAL TRrBUNE.l
WEALTH HINTS
For Old and Young.
BY FELIX L. OSWALD, NJ. D.,
Author of Physical Education; Household
Remedies; THE Bible of NATURE etc.
CHAPTER III.

ern farm journals the description of desirable
country home generally mentions the convent
ence of good spring. In the neighborhood of
| q large city that advantage, however, is apt to
| become rather questionable. With the rarest
exception ground water derived from the
drainage of thickly-settled lands become pol
| luted with all sorts of impurities; so much so,
| indeed that mountaineer would hardly rec
ognize the result as drinking water. Your
coffee is hard to beat" a Georgia highlander of
my acquaintance told his Atlanta landlord,
but your springs somehow all taste like ditch
water"
Ice water (often derived from chunks of
| frozen canal mud is hardly an improvement,
and far better alternative is a Well-kept els
| tern. well-cemented pit cistern can be kept
cool enough to dispense with ice; but few peo-
| pie are aware that the disagreeable by-taste of
stale rain-water can be obviated by a very SIM
| pie cOntrivance The usual precaution of
never turning the spout on till good shower
! has washed the roofs clean does not always suf
fee for that purpose, since the last drainage
| latter the rain has turned into mere driZzle)
| is likewise apt to impart an unpleasant taste
/ to the water Pure rain water, properly cooled,
would satisfy the most fastidious disciple of the
! hydropathic school, if it could only be gathered
| under the most favorable circumstances. An
/ inventive medical friend of mine managed to
| solve that problem by the following arrange
! ment: At the upper edge of his cstern, just
where the waterspout entered the cistern- box,
! he inserted short, elbow shaped piece of pipe
in way to leave small gap between the hori-
| zontai section OF that elbow and the aperture
| in the boards of the box. Only heavy rain
| could thus send down the drainage with suffi-
cient force to overlap that gap; driblets
| dropped from the edge of the pipe and could
not enter the cistern at ALL By close attention
to every change of weather, a similar result
could, of course be obtained without that con-
trJXr In hos sIaoyr note
apt to occur in the middle of the night, or on
days when the manager of the cistern might
happen to be otherwise engaged.
SURROUNDINGS.
Statistics prove that there is no necessary
correlation between sea-coasts and epidemicS,
the high sea-hOrders of California and north
ern New England being entitled to rank with
the healthiest regions of this planet. The i'm
mediate neighbOrhood of the ocean guarantees
pure air currents enough to counterfeit the
effluvia of all but the deadliest swamps, and
even our great inland lakes purify their atmos-
phere by sanitary system of their own.
Our great rivers, on the other hand, become
insalubriousas soon as they enter the lowlands,
where every flood leaves layer of miasma-
breeding sediments. Prof. Kennedy, of Osweg0,
| n. Y, ascertained that the raniest seasons do
not raise the level of Lake Ontario by more
than fraction of an inch, while the Misss-
| slppl at Memphis frequently rises % feet, and
| the Ohio between Cincinnati aud Louisville
sometimes as much as 90 feet. The baneful
| consequences Of such floods are not confined to
! the neighborhood of the tropics. Masked
malaria" as physicians call it, occurs as far
north as southern Iowa. and manifests itself in
chronic biiousness, languor and loss OF appe-
| tite. There may be a good deal of truth in
DIR. Kings conjecture that muslletos were in
| tended to discourage the settlement of swampy
districts, or at least their selection for the
sites of permanent dwelling houses. On the
| western border of the Mexican State of Tabas-
co, experience has taught the natives to perch
their hamlets on the ridge of steep hills, where
they can sleep unmolested and live to good
| old age, though during the cool morning hours
of every day they cultivate the rice-felds aud
| banana gardens of the fostering lowlands. The
settlers of Missionary Ridge, near Chattanooga
Tenn, for similar reasons enjoyed an almost
/ complete immunity from the yellow fever cpl
denies that more than once visited the down
town quarters, and near Memphis it was found
that the safety of any special district could be
generally predicted by its distance from the
gnat-haunted river-shore.
| The vicinity of small, rapid highland stream
| however, is an unquestionable blessing. 1t
affords the best natural bathing facilities, and
secures a perennial water supply besides fur
nishing motive power for ali sorts of labor
saving machinery, aad obyiating the necessity
| for extensive drainage-pipes. The "blest
! silence" frequently mentioned as main charm
| of secluded country home, must not be taken
too literally, and fullls its chief purpose in the
| absence of disturbing noises. There are noises
| that make sweet slumber sweeter," says lover
| ofcountry life. Tneintermitted creaking of an
| open door etfectually interrupts every train of
| thought; the nightlong barking of a vicious
! cur can tempt man to resort to dynamite
aud poison. But there are soothing sounds-the
| drowsy echo of a distant mill wheel, for in
Cfa ftn !. -
| pines grove, when the spirits of the past
seem to ride the night wind but especially
| the low murmuring of a mountain brook
! that mingles with our dreams like a
lullaby of our childhood years" | knew an
| old mariner who built his cottage on a surf
beaten cliff, for the special purpose of enjoying
] the rhythmic boom of the breakers, and there
are people who are fond of sleeping in an attic
| where they can hear the pattering of a heavy
| rain, which, by the witchery of contrast, seems
! TO make a cosy, dry room doubly snug As a
| rule, natural and continuous sounds are less
| irritating than artificial and intermitted ones
and the incessant thunder of storm driven
sea is out and ont preferable to the occasional
sharp screech of steam whistle. Even the
all-night rumbling in the car-sheds of large
| railway junction Is moro endurable than the
| spasmodc racket upon the arrival of a night
train at a little country station. Still better
no doubt, is the unbroken peace of highland
| nome, WHeTt as capt. lFeIdWley S lrlend Wrote
from a cottage in the Euganean Hills, you
will find no litter but the litter of the rose
leaves, and no noise but the noise of the night
| ingales."
Like the successive depths of horror in
Dante's Inferno, there are degrees misery even
| in the Stun quarters of smoky manufacturing
| town, and the most undesirable of all. build
| ing-sites is on the whole, a patch of made
| ground" as our real-estate sharks prefer to
call the hillocks of refuse popularity known as
dump piles" composed of street sweepings
ash-heaps, tam bark and all sorts o less men
tionable flth-leveled and thinly covered
with stratum of gravel as basis for new
section of buildng-lots. Every heavy rain, of
course, penetrates that surface stratum, and in
warm weather the subjacent melange becomes
an effective hotbed of contagious diseases
| typhoid, remittent fevers and diphtheria
Similar effects may result from the neighbour
| hood of the stagnant pools which American
tolerance allow to accumulate at the inter
section of railway dams and new streets To
what extremes of noisomeness a nuisance of
that kind is often permitted to go was illus
trated last year in large city of the Ohio
Valley, where condemned" old canal was
drained just enough to expose the accumu-
lated filth of its ditch, and there left to tester
under the influence of the Summer sun week
after week, till the increase of typhoid epi-
denies at last provoked mass meeting of the
outraged citizens. With the muzzle of heavy