Page:The Homes of the New World- Vol. I.djvu/260

 downright murder. The great quantity of flesh meat and fat, the hot bread, the highly-spiced dishes, preserves in an evening, oysters, made dishes—we could not bear these in Sweden (we indeed will never roast our meat with anything but good butter!) and here they ought to be put in the Litany—that they ought! and so ought also the “furnaces,” as they are called, that is, a sort of pipe which conveys hot air into a room through an opening in the floor or the wall, and by which means the room becomes warm, or as it were boiling, in five or ten minutes, but with a dry, close, unwholesome heat, which always gives me a sensation of pain as well as drowsiness in the head. The small iron stoves which are in use here are not good either: they are too heating and too extreme in their heat; but yet they are infinitely better than these furnaces, which I am sure have some secret relationship with the fiery furnace of hell. They seem to me made on purpose to destroy the human nerves and lungs. Besides these, they have in their drawing-rooms the heat of the gas-lights; and when we add to this the keenness and the changeableness of the atmosphere out of doors, it is easy to explain why the women, who in particular are, in this country, so thoughtless in their clothing, should be delicate and out of health, and why consumption should be greatly on the increase in these north-eastern states. Besides this, many often suffer from dyspepsia as a consequence. I am in the meantime indescribably thankful to have been rescued from the claws of the monster; for I consider myself to have been so, as I understand how to defend myself with regard to food, and I take with me my physician's globules and prescriptions. And my good old physician, with his somewhat rugged exterior and his heart warm with human love, I am really so much attached to him! For seven weeks has he now attended me with the greatest care, coming every day, sometimes two or three times in