“Slander,” says Saint Bernard, “is a poison which extinguishes charity, both in the slanderer and in the person who listens to it; so that a single calumny may prove fatal to an infinite number of souls, since it kills not only those who circulate it, but also all those who do not reject it.”—Pascal.
“Slander,” says Saint Bernard, “is a poison which extinguishes charity, both in the slanderer and in the person who listens to it; so that a single calumny may prove fatal to an infinite number of souls, since it kills not only those who circulate it, but also all those who do not reject it.”—Pascal.
From the French of M. A. CHALLAMEL.
Fashion is the expositor of our habits and our social relations, from the standpoint of costume. It is a much more serious subject than it may seem at first; far from serving only as a source of frivolous talk, even when it is specially concerned with our dress and ornamentation, the subject of fashion, it has been wisely said, has its value as a moral sign-post, and supplies the historian, the philosopher, and the novelist with a guide to the prevailing ideas of the time.
It is of the French fashions we speak here; for in France, the land of classic fancy, the empire of fashion, has assuredly been more deeply felt than elsewhere. Even in primitive Gaul were the fashions fixed, but their common sense is to be commended. The Gallic woman was demanded by fashion to follow a strict course of bathing. In every locality baths were established, and they were to her a delight, a duty, and a necessity. At Marseilles young girls were forbidden by custom the use of wine, lest it should injure the ivory whiteness of their complexion. To guard against excess in dress, the law required that the highest marriage portion of a woman should not exceed one hundred golden crowns. The history of political events has had more influence on fashion than may be generally supposed. Upon the conquest of the country by Cæsar, Roman manners were introduced into primitive Gaul, and the Gallic women, declining to be beaten in the art of pleasing, as their husbands had in arms, adopted the fashions of Rome. Extravagance in dress became boundless. We have in this early period the beginning of two modern fashions. Some ladies chose to wear garments which, on account of their breadth, were called by Horacepalissades. From these the crinoline appears to have been derived. Ovid observes that to equalize the shoulders, if one were slightly higher than the other, it was customary to drape lightly the lower of the two. Thus originated padding. These Gallo-Roman ladies were elegant in all their surroundings, and the Frenchwoman of to-day has not a better sorted wardrobe. Parasols, mirrors, fans, perfumes, pomatums, and cosmetics—all these things were known to the Gallo-Roman period.
It was not until about the tenth century that dress in France became original. The women of the provinces adopted costumes of their own, and, at their will, added details. Indeed, if the history of fashion is studied, it will be seen that the original type of dress has not changed. It is the subordinate parts that undergo continual alteration. The skirt, the tunic (or overskirts), the mantle, the cap and reticule have always existed since the time of our Gallic mothers. One modification of the skirt produced a great furore in religious circles—it was the trail to the gown. A disgusted prior said: “The tail gives a woman the look of a serpent,” and the council of Montpellier forbade the appendix in question on penalty of excommunication. No fashion ever brought down more anathemas on the fair sex than the “hennins.” It was introduced, too, in a period when it would naturally be supposed that the very terror of the time would have destroyed all passion for dress and capricious fashions—the melancholy time of the Hundred Years’ War. This hennin was a kind of two-horned head-dress, made of muslin, stiffly starched and kept in place by fine wire, and of most exaggerated size. Paradin says: “It was peaked like a steeple, or with tall horns; from these horns hang flags, capes, fringe and other material. Such head-dresses were naturally very expensive, and husbands were loud in complaint.” Confessors and monks added their curses. They considered the hennin as an invention of the evil one, and organized a deadly warfare against the obnoxious article; but this uproar availed nothing, the women only gave up their hennins from a caprice similar to that which had invented them.
One strange fashion of the whole Middle Ages related to the color of the hair. Fair hair alone was considered beautiful. On this point the French and the Greeks were of one mind. In Shakspere’s play of “As You Like It” we find Rosalind as she hoots at Phœbe, laughing at her “black silk-hair” as a mark of her plainness. The word “fashion” seems to convey an almost absolute sense of novelty, but that which is new to-day may be but a revival of what is old. “There is nothing new under the sun,” applies with special force to fashion. The pretty trifles worn by women of to-day are nothing but the reproduction of similar ornaments worn by the Egyptians, the Greeks, the Romans, or the Gauls, and all our novelties find their origin many centuries in the past.
By W. T. HARRIS.
In previous chapters we have studied the nations of Western Asia and Africa in regard to internal appliances for education, but more especially in regard to external educational influence upon other peoples.
At this important point in our discussions, when we are passing into a new region—that of Europe, or “the West,” as contrasted with Asia as “the East”—we may sum up briefly the chief results before considering the special theme of this chapter.
Education in Egypt consisted, on the part of the common people, in learning to read and write the script alphabet derived from the hieroglyphics, the elements of arithmetic, and one’s trade or vocation. A higher system of education was reserved for the candidates for the priestly caste, including the branches of language, mathematics, astronomy, natural science, music and religion. There was also a secret doctrine taught to the illuminated ones who entered on the duties of the priestly caste.
In Egypt the State was as thoroughly subordinated to the priestly class as in Persia to the military caste, or in Phœnicia and Carthage to the mercantile caste. The aim of life was there to prepare for death, and the earthly hull of the body was to be carefully preserved as the soul would need its body again after 3,000 years; it was carefully embalmed and laid to rest in the tombs of the hills, or if royal was placed in a pyramid. The court in which the dead were tried and judgment pronounced upon their lives, decreeing the honors of burial or denying this privilege was the great national educational institution.
With the old Persians education according to Herodotus consisted chiefly in training its youth to bear arms and to tell the truth. To use the bow and arrow skilfully and to ride on horseback fitted him for duties in his warlike nation.
Theoretical education included the arts of reading, writing, and polite behavior, and was in the hands of the eighty thousand Magi, a carefully educated class, who divided their members into three grades: (a) the apprentices, or first initiated; (b) journeymen, those who had passed the second degree, and (c) masters, those who had reached the highest degree. The Persian mind set up the principles of light and darkness, which he further defined as good and evil. It was a point upon which great stress was laid by their teachers, to inculcate a practice of good and an abhorrence of evil. The public education lasted from the age of seven to that of twenty-four. Before the fifth year the child was not to be told “this is bad,” or “this is good,” but only told “do not doit again,” when he committed a fault. Before the age of seven years he was never to be whipped. The virtues of self-denial in matters of eating and drinking, of conquest over one’s appetites, and of obedience to what is prescribed, were especially inculcated.
Of the Phœnician education we know only that it laid great stress upon what is useful in the arts and trades. The Carthaginian colony taught their youth reading, writing, arithmetic, and religious duties, besides a special trade and the use of arms. Their moral instruction was of a questionable character, useful in their commerce perhaps, but admitting of deceit and violence. “Punic faith” became a by-word in surrounding nations for treachery. In Phœnicia we find a marked departure from the family training that formed so large a part of the instruction in other Oriental nations. Indifference toward family and one’s native land, and a passionate love for adventure and commercial gain were fostered necessarily in its system of education, because the State depended upon these qualities for its prosperity.
In Judea the education wore an oriental stamp. Religious history perhaps was the foremost of the branches of study. The arts of reading and writing were required in order that the youth might learn to read the written law which had been especially delivered to his nation from the most high to Moses on Mount Sinai. The law was impressed upon the memory of the child. Song and music were taught but gymnastics was neglected. The girls learned household employments—spinning, weaving, sewing, painting, cooking, dancing, and cymbal-playing. They were educated by their mothers in piety, cleanliness, and morality. A school of prophets seems to have been established by Samuel when music and religious poetry were cultivated. After the Babylonian exile rabbinical lore was prominent in the higher education.
The Mediterranean Sea is the center of all progressive civilization in modern history. Upon its shores the Orient and Occident have met and mingled. Phœnicia, Judea, Greece, Rome, Carthage,—these have played their parts in its history. The European states trace the first impulses of their culture to Asia. But Europe borrowed nothing without assimilating it to a new principle radically different from the Oriental principle. It is the principle of individuality—of personal development, of personal achievement, of personal freedom,—that we meet upon the shores of Europe, and education assumes at once a new interest to us when we come to Greece and Rome.
A wide chasm separates the European education from the Asiatic. The East celebrates the infinite as something not only without bounds and limits, but as something devoid of all distinction, and hence devoid of conscious personality; God is in his essence not revealable to man, is their doctrine. Europe, on the other hand, celebrates the distinctions within the personality. In Western Asia, and particularly in Egypt, there was an approach toward the recognition of personality in God, and in the Hebrew religion there was the complete attainment of this idea. The Hebrew idea finds its beginnings in Asia, but its development looks to Europe, whose peoples find in the religion derived from Judea their ideal.
Greece and Rome develop the idea of individuality in a very different manner from Persia and Egypt, and do not know anything of the Hebrew idea until their national career has been run. Greece does not reach the idea of one God as Jehovah, but it conceives the divine as beautiful individuality—the gods of Olympus, serene and graceful, but having the special character of human beings.
It was a great step to recognize this human character in the divine,—and the Greek mind rejoiced in the consciousness that his gods were so nearly of his own nature that they could and did dwell in human bodies.
This idea furnishes us the first phase of Greek education—the education of the body by gymnastic games, so as to make it perfectly beautiful and graceful. Cultivation of the body was a religious exercise, for it was a celebration of the divine by realizing it in the form of the beautiful. The East Indian ascetic sought by all means to mortify and deform the body. The Greek sought to perfect it.
There were games for all the Greek States—the Olympian, the Pythian, the Nemæan, and Isthmian—international expositions of strength and beauty.
When the ideal of beauty had been fixed, there came the sculptor who conceived the forms and expressions of the gods of Olympus, taking his hints from human models that he saw all around him. The national culture in gymnastics first, the plastic arts second, these conspired to produce the ideals of beauty which educated the Greek people, and furnish an essential element in the education of all subsequent time. Preceding all plastic art was the poetry of Homer, out of which the Greek civilization seems to have been breathed.
The second book of theIliadfurnished the staple of school education, giving the history and geography of ancient Greece with the most wonderful of literary forms. TheOdysseyextended the education in the same direction, and gave under a thin veil of allegory, the Greek moral code.
The general character of Greek education may be said to be æsthetic—a cultivation of the sense of the beautiful, and a training of the body into symmetry and grace. Gymnastics, music, and grammatical art were the staples of their pedagogy. By music they meant not only a sense of rhythm and measure, but spiritual culture in general—including the several branches over which the Nine Muses presided—whence its name “music.” Poetry and music and mathematics were all included under this designation. Grammatical training included reading, writing, and language studies.
In the development of individuality, the mutual independence of the Greek States and difference in their races or stocks were both causes and results. The Æolian, Dorian, and Ionian stocks manifested different tendencies, the Æolians preferring ear-culture, or music; the Dorians, bodily culture; the Ionians, poetry. The Dorians at Sparta educated boys and girls in the same way, although in separate institutions. There was, indeed, in Sparta, a tendency toward the Persian form of education, with important differences in regard to truth-speaking and honesty. The child was educated solely for the needs of the State, being trained to endure heat and cold and fatigue, and every year being obliged to conform to a more severe discipline, until at thirty years he had become a complete Spartan veteran soldier. Nevertheless the Spartan preserved his Greek individuality even under his Oriental forms of despotism.
The Spartans, though agreeing with the Athenians in certain general characteristics, were in sharp contrast to the latter in the spirit of their education. It was their aim to produce able warriors that led them to train their youth carefully in bodily strength and agility, capacity of endurance, personal bravery, and patriotism. Up to the seventh year the boy was educated in the family; after that time in public, and fed at the common table, and trained with other youth in the disciplines above mentioned, as well as in the art of skillful theft. Every year there was a general public flogging in order to test their strength of endurance and sense of honor. He who bore all the pain without uttering a cry was crowned with garlands. Spartan youth sometimes died under these tortures without uttering a sound. From year to year the discipline became more and more severe. The Spartan girls were trained to be companions of heroes, and had their own gymnasia wherein they learned to run, to wrestle, to jump, and ride the chariot.
At Athens, the chief seat of the Ionian stock, we find the purest type of Greek nationality.
The education of Spartans was designed, as has been said, to fit youth for citizens that could defend the State. That of Athens was for free individuality. The laws of Solon enjoined upon each father in Athens to teach his son a trade, whereby he could earn his living. If the father neglected this the son was absolved from the duty of supporting him in old age. The law of Solon decreed that the boy, before all else, should learn how to read and how to swim. It was a maritime State, and the Greek lived much upon the water. The son of poor parents should be taught music, horsemanship, and gymnastics, hunting and philosophy. It was left to the father to decide whether these higher studies should be undertaken or not. But public opinion was so strong that no father dared to refuse a higher education to his son if his means allowed it. For the first seven years the Athenian boy was under the care of the women. During this period he played with rattles, balls, wooden horses, dice and tops, the skipping of stones in the water, etc. The games and plays of Greek children are interesting, when we study the development of his individuality,—interesting also in hints as to the modern experiment of the kindergarten.
At seven years began the school time of the Athenian boy. An old superannuated slave was assigned to the work, and called in the Greek languagepædagogos, pedagogue, (boy-driver) who accompanied him everywhere as supervisor. In thepedagogiumthe boy learned to read and write. Later came the music teacher, who taught him to play the Cithæra and sing. At last he took up gymnastics and continued it till his eighteenth year. Then he took up his trade selected by the father, and at the age of twenty his education was considered complete.
In the famous funeral oration which Thucydides puts into the mouth of Pericles he congratulates the Athenians on the fact that their fatherland was a great educational center, a sort of school for all Greece. Their temples and works of art were objects of study to all enterprising strangers. Their artists, and poets, and philosophers were sought for the education of all who aspired to culture. The Sophists formed a guild of professional teachers. After Plato and Aristotle, Athens remained a university for many hundred years, or until Justinian closed her schools because of their hostility to the State religion.
The period of the Sophists is of great interest. As teachers of dialectic and rhetoric, they endeavored to fit the Athenian youth for skillful and effective pleas in the courts or persuasive harangues before the people. They taught how to debate and how to make the worse appear the better reason. They pushed their speculations beyond rhetorical forms into the realms of philosophy, and in the end questioned all principles of conviction, and even the bases of morality. All faith was undermined. At this juncture rose Socrates, the greatest character of his age, who showed up by a keener dialectic the firm foundations of virtue and truth, under the shifting sands of opinion and prejudice. Plato has preserved for us in his dialogues the beautiful picture of Socrates in his knight-errant exploits against the Sophists, and finally his tragic but heroic end. Plato’s works have been for more than two thousand years a liberal education into sound and deep philosophy, and, with the works of Aristotle, his pupil and successor, form the canonical books of philosophy. They have furnished the philosophical forms used by the Christian fathers in building up the great structure of Christian theology.
The Greek people have given to the world the two great elements of art and science—the æsthetic and theoretic forms of culture. Their defect is found in their exclusive devotion to those two phases. We must find in the Roman civilization the forms of the will which civilization has needed in order to form political and social institutions—the Greeks were weak on this side.
Above all, the deep spirituality, the communion with God as the one Infinite Person, creator of heaven and earth, is not to be found in Greek education, although it is the most important, nay, the all-essential point in our modern education.
After the time of Aristotle the Greek intellect dissipated itself in Stoicism and skepticism, and a cloud of darkness settled down gradually over the country, when Rome conquered its last armies, and reduced it to obedience to an alien principle. At a few centers like Alexandria and Athens, art and science were cultivated to a very high degree, but Greece had nothing new to contribute to the world, and its labors henceforth were for Roman hire, or frequently the work of bondmen. The wealthy Roman owned Greek slaves, who acted as tutors to his children and producers of art for his amusement. But as nurses and tutors the Greek soon spread his Greek education over the mighty nation that had conquered the world.
By J. S. HOWSON.
Fair daffodils I took across the western sea away,To cheer my lonely cabin and to talk to me of home.Not double daffodils I took, but single—freshly comeFrom wintry village fields. I hate the dowager display,That spoils sweet nature’s manner, and with bold and stately stareArrays in artificial pomp the fashionable square.Not for me only were those gifts. I marked where children clung,Warm and close-pressed, around a mother seeking distant lands.One flower I chose apart and placed in tiny baby hands,When soon it lay in fragments, on the wet deck torn and flung.Dear child! she only broke her latest toy. What should she knowOf hopes and memories that in those yellow petals grow?Another to a woman lone, with sorrow worn and spent,I gave: she took it tearfully; and when I next passed by,She held it tenderly, and watched it with a serious eye,As loth that it should fade. Perchance her quickened fancy went,Where once her footsteps strayed, by mountain stream and copse and glen,And neighbor-cottages, which now she will not see again.Fair daffodils, what power lives for us in your gentle mood!Sure promise of bright spring beyond the changeful stormy ways;Lessons of quiet love, that bind our last and earliest days;Of patience, and of humble hope to be not great but good.Then let me learn what ye would calmly teach, here by my side,In pensive dignity and grace and modest queenly pride.
Fair daffodils I took across the western sea away,To cheer my lonely cabin and to talk to me of home.Not double daffodils I took, but single—freshly comeFrom wintry village fields. I hate the dowager display,That spoils sweet nature’s manner, and with bold and stately stareArrays in artificial pomp the fashionable square.Not for me only were those gifts. I marked where children clung,Warm and close-pressed, around a mother seeking distant lands.One flower I chose apart and placed in tiny baby hands,When soon it lay in fragments, on the wet deck torn and flung.Dear child! she only broke her latest toy. What should she knowOf hopes and memories that in those yellow petals grow?Another to a woman lone, with sorrow worn and spent,I gave: she took it tearfully; and when I next passed by,She held it tenderly, and watched it with a serious eye,As loth that it should fade. Perchance her quickened fancy went,Where once her footsteps strayed, by mountain stream and copse and glen,And neighbor-cottages, which now she will not see again.Fair daffodils, what power lives for us in your gentle mood!Sure promise of bright spring beyond the changeful stormy ways;Lessons of quiet love, that bind our last and earliest days;Of patience, and of humble hope to be not great but good.Then let me learn what ye would calmly teach, here by my side,In pensive dignity and grace and modest queenly pride.
Fair daffodils I took across the western sea away,To cheer my lonely cabin and to talk to me of home.Not double daffodils I took, but single—freshly comeFrom wintry village fields. I hate the dowager display,That spoils sweet nature’s manner, and with bold and stately stareArrays in artificial pomp the fashionable square.
Fair daffodils I took across the western sea away,
To cheer my lonely cabin and to talk to me of home.
Not double daffodils I took, but single—freshly come
From wintry village fields. I hate the dowager display,
That spoils sweet nature’s manner, and with bold and stately stare
Arrays in artificial pomp the fashionable square.
Not for me only were those gifts. I marked where children clung,Warm and close-pressed, around a mother seeking distant lands.One flower I chose apart and placed in tiny baby hands,When soon it lay in fragments, on the wet deck torn and flung.Dear child! she only broke her latest toy. What should she knowOf hopes and memories that in those yellow petals grow?
Not for me only were those gifts. I marked where children clung,
Warm and close-pressed, around a mother seeking distant lands.
One flower I chose apart and placed in tiny baby hands,
When soon it lay in fragments, on the wet deck torn and flung.
Dear child! she only broke her latest toy. What should she know
Of hopes and memories that in those yellow petals grow?
Another to a woman lone, with sorrow worn and spent,I gave: she took it tearfully; and when I next passed by,She held it tenderly, and watched it with a serious eye,As loth that it should fade. Perchance her quickened fancy went,Where once her footsteps strayed, by mountain stream and copse and glen,And neighbor-cottages, which now she will not see again.
Another to a woman lone, with sorrow worn and spent,
I gave: she took it tearfully; and when I next passed by,
She held it tenderly, and watched it with a serious eye,
As loth that it should fade. Perchance her quickened fancy went,
Where once her footsteps strayed, by mountain stream and copse and glen,
And neighbor-cottages, which now she will not see again.
Fair daffodils, what power lives for us in your gentle mood!Sure promise of bright spring beyond the changeful stormy ways;Lessons of quiet love, that bind our last and earliest days;Of patience, and of humble hope to be not great but good.Then let me learn what ye would calmly teach, here by my side,In pensive dignity and grace and modest queenly pride.
Fair daffodils, what power lives for us in your gentle mood!
Sure promise of bright spring beyond the changeful stormy ways;
Lessons of quiet love, that bind our last and earliest days;
Of patience, and of humble hope to be not great but good.
Then let me learn what ye would calmly teach, here by my side,
In pensive dignity and grace and modest queenly pride.
There is no uprightness of intention that can justify calumny; nor even though the question were the conversion of the whole earth to the belief of revealed truth, would it be allowable to blacken the innocent, because we must not do the least evil even to bring about the greatest good, for “the truth of God requires not the assistance of our untruths,” as the Scripture says (Job xiii:7).—Pascal.
There is no uprightness of intention that can justify calumny; nor even though the question were the conversion of the whole earth to the belief of revealed truth, would it be allowable to blacken the innocent, because we must not do the least evil even to bring about the greatest good, for “the truth of God requires not the assistance of our untruths,” as the Scripture says (Job xiii:7).—Pascal.
[Concluded.]
A very large quantity of fresh air is spoiled and rendered foul by the act of breathing. You, yourself, spoil not less than a gallon every minute. In eight hours’ breathing a full-grown man spoils as much fresh air as seventeen three-bushel sacks could hold! If you were shut up in a room seven feet broad, seven feet long, and seven feet high, the door and windows fitting so tightly that no air could pass through, you would die, poisoned by your own breath, in a very few hours; in twenty-four hours you would have spoiled all the air contained in the room, and have converted it into poison, provided you could have lived therein so long.
One hundred years ago the English were allowed by the Great Mogul or Emperor of India, to build warehouses and dwellings in certain parts of his Empire. One of these mercantile settlements or factories, as they were called, was planted on the bank of a large river just where Calcutta, the capital city of Bengal, now stands.
In the year 1756, the nabob, or tributary king of the province of Bengal died, and was succeeded by a very young man, who bore the outlandish looking title of Surajah Dowlah. This young barbarian cast a covetous eye on the neighboring British factory, and one summer day attacked the place suddenly with a large army. The small party of English who were in the factory, despairing of their ability to effect any successful defense, tried to make their escape to some ships which were lying in the river.
Several of the fugitives reached the vessels in safety. But in the confusion of the flight, one hundred and forty-six individuals fell into the hands of the victorious nabob. These, his officers thrust for the night into a small cell, which was used as the prison of the fortress, and was known under the dismal name of the Black Hole of Calcutta. This cell had but two small square holes for windows, and was only eighteen feet long and fourteen feet wide, so that the last person of the one hundred and forty-six had to be crushed in upon the rest with violence, as the door was closed and locked. The anguish of the crowded captives soon became so great, in this vile hole, that the neighborhood resounded with the noise of their struggles and cries. As the night wore on, these sounds, however, gradually sunk into silence. When the morning came, and the door of the prison was opened, the reason of this silence became sadly apparent. In the place of the one hundred and forty-six prisoners who were shut up on the previous day, they took out one hundred and twenty-three corpses, and, twenty-three miserable beings, who looked more like ghastly spectres than men, and who could hardly be said to be alive. This occurrence furnished one remarkable instance of the deadly power of the poison vapors which are poured out from the inside of living beings. Now I will tell you about another case of a similar kind.
A few years ago, a vessel started from Cork in Ireland, to take a large number of emigrants to a ship just about to sail from Liverpool. A violent storm sprung up in the night, as the vessel was crossing the Irish Channel, and the captain, fearing that the alarmed passengers would interfere with the sailors, and render it difficult to work the ship, sent them all below into the hold, and covered them closely down with the hatches. The imprisoned passengers soon found that they were suffocating, and called and knocked loudly for help, but their cries either were unheard or disregarded. In the morning the hatches were removed, and to the horror of the captain and his crew, the hold was found half full of dead bodies and dying people, instead of containing living men and women. Such are the fearful consequences which follow, when human beings are forced to breathe the same air over and over again.
You are very much shocked, both at the savage cruelty of the Indian tyrant, and at the carelessness and ignorance of the Irish captain. But what will you think of yourself if I now show that you do, in a small degree, every night, what they did on so large a scale? What was it that caused the closeness of this room before we opened the window? It was the presence of precisely the same kind of poison, as that which killed the prisoners at Calcutta, and the passengers in the hold of the ship. That poison did not destroy you in a single night, only because it had not gathered in sufficient strength to do so. Your room was not more than half as large as the Black Hole of Calcutta, but there were only two of you shut up in it instead of one hundred and forty-six. The air of your room was merely hurtful instead of being deadly. But the fact still remains.When you rose in the morning, that air was not fit for a human creature to breathe.
When you rise to-morrow morning, just go out of doors for five minutes, and observe carefully the freshness of the air. That air is in the state in which God keeps it for breathing. Then come back suddenly into your close room, and your own senses will at once make you feel how very far the air of your chamber is from being in the same wholesome and serviceable condition.
This is one way, then, in which people produce derangement in their bodies, and cause their works, or organs, to get choked up and clogged. They are not careful always to keep fresh air immediately around them. They suffocate themselves slowly; taking, perhaps, a long time to complete their task, but, nevertheless, accomplishing it none the less surely. Individuals who dwell in crowded towns, and, therefore, have to live by day as well as by night in close, impure apartments, go down to their graves, even before they have reached their prime; and their thin pale faces, dull sunk eyes, and languid movements, tell they are doing so, with painful clearness. It is well known that people who dwell in towns and work in close rooms, as a rule, die seventeen years earlier than men who dwell in the country, and work in the fields by day.
Country folks escape this severe penalty, because even when they half smother themselves by night, the thoroughly fresh air in which they spend the day goes a great way toward the removal of the mischief. Still they are by no means free from all penalty. You yourself have suffered from breathing bad air. Do you remember last autumn, when I came to see you sick in bed with the fever? Do you recollect how your limbs ached, and your skin burned then, and how you tossed restlessly from side to side, without being able to sleep, your mouth and tongue being brown and parched with dryness which water could not moisten? You could not raise your head from the pillow; and once when I asked you how you felt, you answered me by telling me something about the corn stacks and the last harvest, being quite unconscious of what you were saying. What do you think was the matter with you then? Your body and blood were full of poisonous vapor. And what do you think had made them so? Why, fresh air had not done its work of purification as it ought. You had been breathing a great deal of impure air, and were paying the penalty for having done so. If you had seen the prisoners in the Black Hole of Calcutta an hour or two before they died, you would have found them exactly in the same state.
The term “fever” is taken from a Latin word which signifies “to burn.” The skin and the body feel burning hot in fever, because impure poisonous blood is flowing everywhere through their vessels, in the place of pure blood, and the blood is poisonous because it has not been freed from its poison-vapors as fast as they have been bred in, or thrown into its streams. In the worst forms of fever the blood gets so impure that it steams out, through the breath, vaporswhich are able to produce the same kind of disease in other people, and which are, under these circumstances, termedinfection. The infectious poison-vapors of fever get so strong when they are received into close rooms, and are not allowed to be blown away, that they often kill persons who breathe them in that state, very quickly.
But you want me to explain how all the mischief, which results from breathing foul air, may be prevented. Come down with me into the garden, and creatures that you believe to be of far inferior powers to yourself, shall give you a lesson.
You keep bees. Here is a hive, I see, crowded with the busy insects. By the numbers that I observe clustering about the low arched door, and bustling out and in so incessantly, I learn that the industrious little fellows must be very closely packed together in their straw house. There must be many thousands of them dwelling together in a place that can not, at the most, equal more than a couple of square feet; and there is not a single window in the straw wall; no opening of any kind but the low, and half-choked entrance. Really, if those bees need to breathe, you who have furnished them with their dwelling must be nearly as bad as the cruel nabob, who shut up his prisoners in the Indian Black Hole!
Those bees certainly do need to breathe every bit as much as men and women; and what is more, they manage to breathe ten times better than you do at night. Notwithstanding all the crowding there is within their close dwelling, the air never gets there into the poisonous state in which the air of your sleeping room is by the morning. The bees take care that it shall not do so. Just bend down your ear and listen near the hive for a minute. Do you hear that incessant low humming? That is the bees hard at work, making an artificial wind. It is the sound of a couple of score of broad, stiff fans, flapping to and fro with great rapidity. Look, I drop this piece of light thistle-down near the door of the hive, and you see it is at once blown away from it by a steady draught. If you could see through the straw walls, you would notice twenty little sturdy fellows holding on to the floor of the hive with their feet, just within the door, and flapping their wings backwards and forwards without a moment’s pause. Now and then one or two tired insects drop out from the line of the fanners, but their places are immediately filled by fresh recruits, who lay hold of the floor and fall vigorously to work with their wings. This is the appointed band of air-purifiers, plying their business for the good of the entire community, and wafting a fresh breeze continuously through the hive. The bees take it by turns to carry on this necessary labor, and some of them are always at it. The humming caused by the rapid vibrations of their fans, scarcely ever ceases. It has been ascertained that air taken from the inside of a hive, is quite as pure as the fresh air that floats in the open space around; so perfectly do these little earnest workmen perform their purifying task.
The industrious bees, then, are an example to mankind. If people dwell in close rooms, they must cause an artificial breeze of fresh air to blow through them. Having shut out the great wind, that it may not chill too much by its uncontrollable currents, they must introduce such a little wind as they can keep thoroughly under control, but which nevertheless is sufficient to perform the office of purification as far as it is required. This process of causing an artificial wind to blow through the inside of a dwelling is calledventilation, from a Latin word which signifies “to blow” or fan with the wind.
In very hot climates where dwellings need to be ventilated for the sake of coolness, as well as for purification, men follow precisely the example set by the bees. They hang up broad and stiff canvas fans, which they callpunkas, near the ceiling, and cause these to flap backwards and forwards constantly, by pulling them to and fro with ropes. In more temperate climates, it is rarely found necessary to take all this trouble, for the air readily makes currents of its own accord inside of rooms, if only allowed to do so. All that is necessary is the furnishing of a free passage into the room, and a free passage out, and it will then make a clear march through. One opening will not do, when fans are not kept going, because then the entering and departing air would meet face to face and obstruct each other. There must be “in” and “out” doors, just as one sees in much frequented offices and banks, in great towns.
A very effectual plan for securing the ventilation of a dwelling room consists in carrying a pipe of perforated zinc across the house, from outside wall to outside wall, just beneath the ceiling, allowing the ends to pass through the walls quite into the open air; then whichever end of the pipe chances to be most towards the quarter of the heavens from which the wind is blowing, should be closed with a plug, a free passage being left for the escape of the heated air through the opposite end. A number of holes should also be made through the door, near its bottom, until altogether they afford as much room to passing air as the inside bore of the zinc pipe. If you cannot manage to fix such a zinc pipe across the ceiling, why take out one or two of the panes of the window, and put into their place, plates of what is calledperforated zinc(zinc plates pierced full of holes), such as you may buy for a trifle at any ironmongers. That is the next best thing you can do.
As soon as some arrangement of this kind has been completed, you will find that the air begins to move gently through the room, cold fresh air coming in through the holes in the door, and warm impure air being pressed out before it through the perforated zinc tubes or plates. This takes place partly because the external wind rushes, in its hasty way, against the openings through which the air is intended to enter, and forces itself in; but also, and more particularly, because the inside air gets warmer than the outside, and is then compelled to shift its quarters on that account.
The air contained inside of inhabited rooms gets warmed by the bodies and breaths of the persons living there. Then it is lighter, bulk for bulk, than the colder air outside, for warmth stretches and lightens everything. But as heavy things fall or press down to the earth more strongly than light ones, the cold air always squeezes into the room through the lower openings, and pushes the warm impure air out before it, through the upper ones.
When you light a fire in your room during cold weather, it makes a quick and strong draught through the room, for the same reason. Fires, indeed, are among the most powerful ventilators that can be brought into play. Let your fire out, and go on sitting in the room with two or three of your neighbors, and you will find the air of the room will be close and foul in half-an-hour, although it was quite fresh before. While the fire is burning, the chimney takes upon itself the office of the holes in the zinc tube or zinc plate fixed in the window, and the heated air of the room is pushed up through it by the fresh cold air which rushes in through all other openings and crevices. It is only in rooms where no fires are burning—as for instance, in your sleeping room—that holes through the walls and windows can serve as outlets for impure air.
But if you live with several companions, in small rooms, as some workpeople are compelled to do by their occupation, those rooms cannot get properly ventilated, even although fires are burning. Some of the poison-vapors, poured out from your living bodies with the breath, are so light that they are at once driven up to the top of the room, and collect there gradually, spreading lower and lower as they become more abundant. They can not get out through holesmade in the walls or windows because, as we have seen, the fire causes streams of cold air to press in there.
A plan has been contrived, however, to ensure perfect ventilation even in small and crowded rooms, provided fires be burning. This plan consists in making an opening into the inside of the chimney, near to the ceiling, and fixing a balanced valve in it in such a way that the valve-plate is opened by outward draughts, but immediately closed by inward ones. Then the impure vapors lurking near the ceiling are continually being swept away, into the current of the chimney, through this valve.
You are sure you have no money to spare to buy valves, and zinc tubes and plates, or to pay to workmen for making holes in your walls, and in your doors and windows. I admit that properly these trifling things should be done at the expense of the landlord to whom the house belongs. It should be as much his duty to make a house fit to live in, so far as due ventilation is concerned, as it is to keep it dry by covering it with a roof of tiles or slate. As landlords, however, are commonly themselves ignorant about these matters, you must learn to look to the affair for yourself. You will be the sufferer if the right thing be not done, therefore it is alike your interest and your duty to see that it is done.
Suppose then that you have a hard landlord who will do nothing for you, and that you are so poor you can not spare a shilling or two for the purchase of metal tubes or plates. Then I will tell you what I would do, if I were in your shoes. I would borrow a large gimlet of the carpenter, and I would bore a row of holes through the upper part of the window frame in my bedroom, just above the glass, sloping them downwards a little, so that the rain may not be able to run in; next I would never quite shut the door of the chamber, and I would bore other holes through the frames of the windows down stairs, to act as channels of inlet. A few rough pegs of wood would serve to close some of the holes, if at any time too much air entered the room in consequence of a strong wind blowing outside. This is what I would do, rather than I would submit to be poisoned at night because I was poor.
A single round hole, a little more than half an inch across, would allow as much air to pass through it, as would be sufficient to supply the breathing of one person, provided the air were driven along by the movements of a fan, or by other mechanical contrivance, with the force of a very gentle breeze. Generally, however, it does not move so fast as this through rooms, when only caused to do so by the greater pressure of external colder air. It is, therefore, better that the ventilating openings, both for inlet and departure, should altogether make up much more than a hole half an inch across.
It is not possible to have too much fresh air in a room, provided only an uncomfortable and chilling draught is not allowed to blow upon the body of the inhabitant. You may easily prevent any discomfort or mischief from draught, even where a great abundance of air is admitted, by hanging a curtain to catch it and turn it aside. You will find, however, that there is very little chance of any troublesome draught when no fire is burning in the room, to make the air rush in with increased power, for it is fires, as you will remember, which cause quick and strong currents.
The warmer and stiller the external air is, the more difficult it becomes to secure free ventilation through the inside of rooms. In the calm hot nights of summer, the windows of sleeping rooms should on this account be left partly open all night long. It is better to breathe air moistened with night dew than it is to breathe air laden with poison vapors.
But if it be important when people are well that they shall have an abundance of fresh air moving through their dwellings, it is of far greater consequence that there shall be a thorough ventilation kept up in rooms where there is sickness. In all kinds of fevers the blood is overloaded with poison vapors, and these can not get out of the body unless they are blown away by pure air. The sick person can not be freed from the poison vapors that are clogging up his vital organs until fresh air is supplied abundantly. Do you remember what it was that first made you better, when you had the fever last year? Can you not recall to mind how all the doors and windows of your room were kept constantly open, and how angry I was whenever I came to your chamber and found them fast closed! Have you forgotten how delicious the fresh air felt to your parched and poisoned frame, and what luxury there was in the clean linen when supplied to your body and to the bed, and in the cold water when it was sponged over your skin?
If ever you are called upon to attend a neighbor or a relation who has to suffer from infectious fever, as you then did, be sure you furnish to that sick person the same comfort and alleviation which were provided for yourself.
Let this be your plan for nursing the sick: Open wide the doors and windows of your chamber. Keep the body of the patient and the room very clean. Change the linen both of the person and the bed very often. Allow only the very simplest kinds of food and drink to be given, and that in small quantities at a time. Prevent all noise and confusion around the bed. There are very few persons indeed who will not recover speedily from attacks of even the worst kinds of fever, if this simple and prudent plan of treatment is steadily pursued.
The poison-vapors of fever and other infectious diseases are very deadly when in their greatest strength, but remain so for a very short time when left to the influences and operations of nature. They can not bear the presence of fresh air. If they are mixed with a great abundance of it as they come out of the mouths of sick people, they directly cease to be dangerous poisons. All that is necessary to prevent infectious fevers from being communicated from person to person, by means of the breath, is to take care that fresh air is continually passing through the sick room. Attendants and visitors may remain with perfect safety in rooms where even the worst kinds of fever are prevailing, if they keep all the doors and windows of the chamber open, and are careful not to catch the breath of the patients until it has passed through some two yards of space, where there is perfectly pure air.
Such, then, is the “worth of fresh air.” It keeps the body healthy and strong. It blows away and destroys the invisible and dangerous poisons which are steamed forth from putrid and decaying matters, and which are to the delicate organs of the living frame much worse than dust and dirt are to clock-work. In disease it is nature’s chief remedy; the best medicine of the best Physician, furnished gratis, because he is full of bounty, as well as of great skill. Never let it any longer be a reproach to you, that you ungraciously turn away such a precious gift and priceless boon from your doors. Rather open wide your windows, as well as your doors, and welcome it with all your heart. Go to the bee, consider its ways, and be wise!