The Indiana State sentinel. [volume] (Indianapolis) 1868-1895, 1893-12-27

Copyright 1893. by American Press Asso-
ciation.)
The alright stove is an insidious a
willy enemy. 1t gives you warmth with
ont trouble. but also without ventilation
and without cheer Think Of the good
old days OF our hardy granfathers. when
flames roared up the chimney and car
! ried all impurities of the air with them.
You cannot have better ventilation than
by an open FIRE No matter il your
back freezes and your cheeks burn. your
lungs are not poisoned by used-up air
ard your skin is not parched by the
dry, unwholesome heat.
You know, undoubtedly. that consump-
ton. the scourge of modern New En-
gland, has more than doubled since the
introduction of the air-tight stove You
know that Americans are a race of dys-
peptics, the unhealthiest race on the face
of the globe-at least on the healthy
part of its face. Yellow lean, nervous,
misunderstanding people, all of us. in the
city and in the country. Look at the
hardy Scotch and English farmers and
their buXom wives and daughters. They
do not look as if they had been bred on
the same planet with us. Our women
break down earlier than those Of other
nations, the men grow old at twice the
rate. There must be some reason for it.
It does not seem probable that il is the
climate nor inherited weaknesses. but
that il is the result Of the conditions I'M
der which we live and bring up our chill
d-en. The plain fact is, we are dying of
our luXuries, our modern improve
ments." Our easy money-getting is our
curse. Better be a little less comforta-
bic and a little more healthy, little
harder worked and a little longer lived.
But let US begin with the air we
breathe 1 think that if an instrument
could be invented which would register
the impurities in the atmosphere, we
should all open our windows when it
marked vile" The worst of our heaven
bestowed instrument of detection, our
organ of smell. is that it gets quite cut
of order if long in an impure atmosphere
and does not record correctly. Now
fancy for a moment what the air must
be in any ordinary living room in any
ordinary farmers or mechanics dwell
ing in the middle of winter. The stove
has been burning night and day for
months. The windows are corked up,
the doors are listed" even, possibly
There is cooking. and there is eating
and there is smoking going on, and there
are at night one or more kerosene lampS
burning actively for hours. And under
meath all there is that arsenal of woe
the cellar, filled perhaps with spoiled
potatoes and other decaying vegetable
matter.
Now. where is this air to go to and
how is fresh air to come in to take its
| place? How can human beings stand
breathing that sort of atmosphere? The
men have the best Of it, for they have
most of them. to go out into the open
/ air, whether they want to or not. but
their wives and daughters usually have
10 stay in and DO the work OF the house.
without having air enough to fill their
| lungs, and it is no wonder that their
! blood is impoverished and that their or
cans, one and ALL lose strength. 1t is
an unnatural and monstrous life, and it
! IS not TO be wondered at that feeble
children are born Of the mothers who
have to lead il. l especially pity my
country sisters in their hot low rooms,
doing work at such a disadvantage. 1t
Is like making bricks without straw.
| pity my sisters. too. who equally
defy the laws of health i'm dress, diet and
air. But now / am talking to the cOun-
try ones. and this is what I say: Heaven
never meant you to lead such lives or
! breathe such air. You are killing your
selves by inches, and it is quite in your
own hands to prevent il. You have
bricked up your chimneys and bought
your stoves, and that probably can't be
| helped. but you can at least take the
stuffing out of the windows and get ven
tilatOrs for them and make it duty to
air the room several times a day. And
buy some Observation-Disclosures
are very cheap-and put one in every
room, and when ii gets to 6S degrees
open the doors and windows and keep
the temperature down to that
| Do not sit in a draft-that is fetal
but open your windows and go out of
the room and come back to it when it is
| fresh. The more deVitalized the air is
the less II warns you. SiXty-eight de-
grees of good air warns you more than
seventy-eight degrees of vitiated air
does. People on the other side of the
| ocean think they cannot breathe when
the thermometer gets above sixty de-
grees I wonder what they would think
of our rooms and Of our railway cars.
| Americans think they can stand any
heat. They certainly have become in
sensible to it. 1t is difficult to make any
place TOO hot for them.
And here in this unrivaled air. this
wonderfully fine new world climate, you
men and women ought to be models of
health and strength, and-you are not.
| Think of it, you who live beside the sea,
there is nothing between you and Spain.
| You can draw a breath 5000 miles long
every time you open your windows. and
you don't open them, but hug your
stoves and shut out the air and wonder
that you don't feel well.
And you who live among the mount
aims. where city people spend thousands
of dollars to take their families every
summer. what air do you breathe seven
months in the year? Air that you have
made bad enough to kill a dog. with
your stoves, and your lamps, and your
stuffed up windows. Now, really, ii
seems a pity that we can't get some
thing out of our splendid clear sunshine,
and our strong winds, and our rich soil
here in America.
If you lived in a foggy little island
like England, where the sun scarcely
ever shines, and where the raw chill
! eats into ones very bones, you might
complain Or if you had to endure the
cold. cherries winters of Germany. or
indeed of all northern Europe, you might
say that nature had not done much for
YOU, and it was no wonder that you
were not healthy. But in fact you have
/ glorious suns, and fine clear air. and a
soil that breeds less evil than else
where. and, with all that, you are the
unhealthest people I'm the world. You
do everything to counterfeit the good
that heaven has sent you, and probably
you charge heaven with your miseries.
To you
The blessed sun and air
Are banned and barred. forbidden rare,
lint forbidden not by heaven but by