Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 26.djvu/848

828 direct upon the table, with—if gas be used—side-brackets next the sideboard, and on either side of the mantel-piece, so as to distribute the light all over the room, and light up the pictures or whatever else is upon the walls, is infinitely better than a great blaze over the table, neither pleasant nor comfortable to those who have to face its glare, and ofttimes unpleasant heat. To avoid all this, it is essential that pure fresh air shall be introduced and distributed over the room, to take the place of that which necessarily becomes foul and tainted by fumes of cooked meats, gas, and the straining of the cubical contents of air-supply by a larger number than usual of people using the room. If there be no means of providing fresh air, and no means of extracting foul air, it follows that, in a very short time, the good air originally contained in the room will become tainted, and at last heated and foul.

Stand on a chair in an ordinary London room, about an hour after it has been lit up and the dinner commenced, and you will then obtain for yourselves some practical knowledge of the suffocating nature of the upper stratum of air, and will not wonder that faintness, nausea, and headache, are often necessary portions of a dinner-party in an improperly ventilated room.

All this can be cured by providing in, say, each corner a tube, adjusted in proportion to the size and height of the room, for the access of fresh air through gratings from the outside wall; and the current and amount of air injected, so to speak, into the room, can be easily adjusted by an ordinary butterfly valve, and all dust and soot, and other impurities kept back by a piece of fine silk or wet sponge. These tubes are often put in much too small, and the size of the outside grating is not considered; in all cases the size of the tube should be proportioned to the cubical contents of the rooms, and the external grating should be, practically, twice the area of that of the tube, as the iron-work of the grating, as a rule, diminishes its usefulness in ventilating area by about half.

If it be not possible to arrange for an extract shaft in the ceiling, a large-sized ventilator may be put in the flue over the fireplace, provided always it be fitted with talc flaps to prevent all back draught; but even the introduction of fresh air alone by some such means as those I have named will make a difference in a few minutes of many degrees in the temperature of the room.

In ordinary houses nothing has struck me as so wanting in thought as the general arrangement of the staircase. As a rule, you enter from the front door into a narrow passage-way, with perhaps an internal screen, with folding-doors which are rarely shut, and immediately opposite is the main staircase of the house, so that any one, on entering, not only commands the absolute thoroughfare of the house, but sees everybody who goes up or comes down, by which privacy is materially interfered with, and the whole house is made subject to