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plans under instructions to do more than devise the cheapest enclosure for a certain number of inmates. The passer-by would be in no danger of mistaking the edifice for a factory or a warehouse. Entering, even when I pass beyond the keepers' quarters, I find much to please in the look of the dwelling; the floors are carpeted or waxed, the walls are hung with at least chromos and engravings, and the fresco painter has evidently done his part. In the insane asylum, I see and hear the piano, I observe patients at the billiard table. The refuge for destitute children has the playroom, and the boys' military company go through their evolutions in honor of our

visit.

But the like duties call me to the poorhouse of the County, and here I see what suggests my brief paper as a member of the Committee on Public Buildings for Dependent Classes.

At this point let me give utterance to a thought that must govern this discussion. Considering that the State recognizes as her wards those who, unequal to self-maintenance, are friendless in the sense of having no arm of support in place of their own, has she, on principle, the right to discriminate in her maintenance, beyond what the age and antecedents of her dependents may require? Plainly, is not the boy or girl whose home must be the poorhouse, for weakness of mind or body, entitled to as great a degree of cleanliness and comfort as the boy or girl received into the State School for Dependent Children? Is not the aged pauper entitled to lie on as good a bed, to sit at as nice a table, as his late fellow inmate of the poorhouse, whom insanity has removed to the asylum for the insane? Things as they are answer "No." But is it easy to justify the answer? The distinction between State and county support will not help the negative, as, really, the State is acting through the county. The poorhouse is a State institution, controlled even to details by State law.

The absence of taste and provision for recreation is, then, chiefly connected with city and county institutions. I speak again as a visitor. As a mere passer-by, you might not think any criticisms necessary. The taste of the keeper's family will often make the flower garden in the front yard, and, to a glance, there is more of such attentions than may be seen at the average farmhouse. But this is the front, and to the paupers, not frequented, if not forbidden ground. A cheerless yard is usually the every-day retreat and view of the inmates. Looking up to the buildings, we commonly

fail to find a blind to give a little variety without and comfort within. Entering, and often climbing stairs that have nothing suggestive of tottering forms and broken limbs, save their danger, we find the cheerlessness of cold, whitewashed walls, the discomfort of benches without backs, save as occasionally the tastes of the inmates make some little show of ornament and ease. Now we are well aware how the prevalent feeling (more pronounced in the officials) for poverty will meet our appeal for a little more regard to appearances, a little attention to the eye and the ear. We shall encounter more or less of the sentiment, that culminates in this, that the poor are a burden on the public that must be made as light as possible, and the sooner it is terminated by their departure out of the world the better. Yet the poverty stricken are not criminals in the eye of the State, and not only the sentiment of duty and civilization holds them men and women of like passions with those of us of higher and happier positions in society; but the individual life discloses the fall from better position, the loss of association, that yet leaves its sympathies untouched.

Why not then make the poorhouse, even in appearance, more of a friendly shelter, and give it a little of the look and comfort of our homes? Why not let the architect throw into his plans, here and there, a line not dictated by necessity, and charge him to keep in view the dwelling adapted to all ages and conditions of health and strength? And why not afford a little of that simple adorning that makes our own homes genial? How easy to relieve the cold, glaring wall by a few pictures or Scripture texts. At what slight cost a room may be furnished! The genial Country Parson, in his essay, "The Moral Influence of the Dwelling," well says: "I wish it were generally understood that it does not of necessity cost a shilling more to build a pretty house of a certain size, than to build a hideous one yielding the like accommodations; taste costs nothing. If you have a given quantity of building materials to arrange in order, it is just as easy and just as cheap to arrange them in a tasteful and graceful order and collocation, as in a tasteless, irritating, offensive, and disgusting one. Elaborate ornament, of course, costs dear, but it does not need elaborate ornament to make a pleasing house, which every man of taste will feel enjoyment in looking at."

The cottage system, now so much in vogue for our eleemosynary institutions, seems to me far more applicable for even the poorhouse

than our common two or three brick stories, with their stairs, their narrow halls, with rooms on either side, bringing the inmates in close connection by day and night; their danger for the feeble, especially in case of fire. The cottages would secure desirable classification. There is even a moral influence connected with the arrangements of taste and fitness. The more you make of the home, the more you make that happiness which is, at least, the absence of worry, of rebellion against rule, of annoyance to others. Allow me to appeal again to the author just quoted: "It needs no argument to prove that if one's abode is subject to the grosser physical disadvantages of smoky chimneys, damp walls, neighboring bogs, incurable draughts, rattling windows, unfitting doors, and the like, the result upon the temper and the views of the man thus afflicted will not be a pleasing one. A constant succession of little contemptible worries tends to foster a querulous, grumbling disposition, which renders a human being disagreeable to himself and intolerable to his friends. Real, great misfortunes and trials, may serve to ennoble the character, but ever recurring petty annoyances produce a littleness and irritability of mind."

Recreation for our paupers may sound entirely too sentimental for many minds, but when we make employment our chief recreation we may be granted a hearing. Life in a poorhouse is commonly listlessness itself. A few of the more able-bodied men and women are called upon for light house and farm duty, but a common reply of the keeper to the inquiry as to labor is, that it is more trouble to get the inmates to do it than it is worth. Let there be enforced labor to the extent that bone and sinew will allow. But for the aged, make some light toil. Why not a little garden to cultivate, or even to kill time with a show of labor; at least, a few flowerpots in the windows to watch over? And if some device, such as a father would set up in his yard for his children's amusement, would beguile time, why not let them have it? They are not criminals, and enforced idleness is considered a refinement of cruelty for the inmates of our prisons.

In two most interesting volumes, "The Charities of Europe," I have been struck with the features I have suggested, especially in the Continental institutions. The family life is the model for establishments for children and adults. The institutional form and action are banished as far as possible.

Before closing this paper, I must make a plea for the chapel. In

a Christian land, any collection of human beings in a community, whether their associate life is by compulsion or choice, supposes a joint worship. The State, with its broad protest against a State religion, will yet give its prisons a chaplain, and even its insane are placed under clerical attention. For institutions of less number and name, the solicitude of Christian ministers or people must supply the worship. This being conceded, a place for worship follows. The proprieties of worship can only be met by suitable places and segregation from other uses. It is a poor tribute to the power of Christian truth and worship, some apartment designed and used for ordinary purposes, employed for the hallowed day. The chapel should be a separate building, everything in its arrangements and its appearance tending to bright, cheering association. The writer can witness to the benefit of even a mere hall in a poorhouse, provided with the simplest furniture, and the walls relieved by a few scripture prints, where Sunday and funeral services were held.

The present paper is only one of simple suggestion. The writer, incompetent to cope with the graver questions of location and construction, heating and ventilation, has confined himself to a simple matter of detail.

IV. VENTILATION OF THE BUILDINGS OF PUBLIC INSTITU

TIONS.

READ BY JOHN P. EARLY, OF INDIANA.

The replacement of noxious or impure air in an apartment by pure fresh air (warmed if need be), from without, is what is intended for consideration (in the use of the word ventilation) in this paper.

This subject is intended to be discussed from the practical standpoint of a layman. Certain requisites must obtain in bringing into use any satisfactory system of ventilation. Any appliances for warming the air must have sufficient heating surface to give the requisite degree of heat without burning or overheating the air. Any appliance for supplying the necessary quantity of air, to be satisfactory, must have a variable capacity adaptable to the changing thermometric and barometric conditions, as nature presents them. And farther, any appliance to meet the pressing

want must be simple in management and subject to ready control, or the attendant will fail to bring out the object desired. The ignorance of the average janitor on this subject, is most wonderful.

Air, in round numbers, is composed of 77 parts nitrogen and 23 parts oxygen. Carbonic acid and water always exist in air, and some other substances (some known and some unknown) usually do, but not always. Carbonic acid is composed of two parts oxygen and one part carbon, and is found in pure, healthful air in the proportion of four or five parts in 10,000; as it increases in air from that proportion it becomes injurious and poisonous; even an increase of two parts in 10,000 is unpleasant; when it goes to 20 parts the air is very bad, and when further increased, and yet infinitesimal apparently in its proportion to the volume of air, it is deadly to animal life.

Respiration, or the act of breathing, evolves carbonic acid to a considerable extent, and at the same time reduces the oxygen, destroying the proper equilibrium. Perspiration from the skin, among other poisonous substances thrown off, gives off carbonic acid. It is thus seen that a person in a confined air, after a length of time sufficient to have rebreathed it so as to have destroyed its equilibrium by the increase of carbonic acid and decrease of oxygen, must necessarily die.

One of the most notable extreme cases on record, in proof, is the familiar one, the Black Hole of Calcutta, into which confined place, allowing but 20 cubic feet of space to each prisoner, at the end of ten hours, 123 were found dead out of 146 persons thrust in. From this deadly apartment we may pass all the way back to the thoroughly, well and uniformly ventilated building, and human life is shortened, health destroyed, impaired or perpetuated, just in that proportion in which the normal condition of the air is perverted or preserved.

I suppose it is in this presence quite unnecessary for me to state the fact that there has not yet been devised a perfect system of ventilation; the forces of nature are too variable, minute and complex, to be mastered in the time that this subject has engaged the attention of mankind. Much information has been gained, and great advancement made in late years, yet the ideas of one decade are greatly changed by the next. What are considered fairly well established facts in one, are exploded or modified by more complete experiments in following ones. No considerable number of

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