To a population, who, for more than two-thirds of the year, are compelled to breathe an atmosphere heated by artificial means, the question how can this air be made, at a moderate expense, to resemble, as far as possible, the purest ether of the skies is, (or as I should rather say ought to be,) a question of the utmost interest. When open fires were used, there was no lack of pure air, whatever else might have been deficient. A capacious chimney carried up through its insatiable throat, immense volumes of air, to be replaced by the pure element, whistling in glee, through every crack, crevice and keyhole. Now the house-builder and stove-maker with but few exceptions[15] seem to have joined hands in waging a most effectual warfare against the unwelcome intruder. By labor-saving machinery, they contrive to make the one, the joints of his wood-work, and the other, those of his iron-work, tighter and tighter, and if it were possible for them to accomplish fully their manifest design, they would be able to furnish rooms almost as fatal to life as "the black hole of Calcutta." But in spite of all that they can do, the materials will shrink, and no fuel has yet been found, which will burn without any air, so that sufficient ventilation is kept up, to prevent such deadly occurrences. Still they are tolerably successful in keeping out the unfriendly element; and by the use of huge cooking-stoves with towering ovens, and other salamander contrivances, the little air that can find its way in, is almost as thoroughly cooked, as are the various delicacies destined for the table. On reading an account of a run-away slave, who was for a considerable time, closely boxed up, a gentleman remarked that if the poor fellow had only known that a renewal of the air was necessary to the support of life, he could not have lived there an hour without suffocation: I have frequently thought that if the occupants of the rooms I have been describing, could only know as much, they would be in almost similar danger. Bad air, one would think, is bad enough: but when it is heated and dried to an excessive degree, all its original vileness is stimulated to greater activity, and thus made doubly injurious by this new element of evil. Not only our private houses, but our churches and school-rooms, our railroad cars, and all our places of public assemblage, are, to a most lamentable degree, either unprovided with any means of ventilation, or, to a great extent, supplied with those which are so wretchedly deficient that they "Keep the word of promise to our ear, And break it to our hope."