Part 15

13. Q. What are the first directions given as to keeping a house clean? A. There must be no decaying vegetables or fruit, no rubbish of any kind kept in the cellar, and the air must be kept perfectly fresh and sweet.

14. Q. What direction is given as to the sink? A. Be sure that your sink is clean, don’t let the drain get stopped up, and once a day, at least, wipe it out thoroughly clean and dry.

15. Q. What precaution is given in reference to the collection of rubbish? A. Don’t let rubbish of any kind collect in the house, keep all your pantries and cupboards clean, and don’t get into the habit of pushing things away into holes and corners.

16. Q. What is said about the care of beds? A. Be sure that your beds are well aired, and that the bedsteads are occasionally wiped off with hot water and soap.

17. Q. What is the subject of Hampton Tract, No. 9? A. “Cleanliness and Disinfection.”

18. Q. What is the name given to the most offensive things? A. Filth.

19. Q. What class of diseases kill about one-half of all who die in England, and are diseases most common in our American towns and homes? A. Filth diseases.

20. Q. For what purpose is this tract written? A. To show why and how to make continual warfare against uncleanliness for the protection of the health and comfort of the people.

21. Q. How may the water of a well or spring be poisoned so that the use of it will destroy life? A. By permitting the drainage into it through the soil of defiling matter.

22. Q. In what substances will some kinds of contagion long remain? A. Porous substances, like the clothing or bedding used by the sick, or in the carpets and cloths, and even in the floors and wall-paper, or unwashed walls of the sick-room.

23. Q. Of what are the contagious disorders of the skin, the eyes and mouth the results? A. Of neglect of cleanliness.

24. Q. What is doubtful in regard to persons who become filthy in their habits, and neglect to provide for the purification of their bodies, clothing and premises? A. It is doubtful if they will ever be found pure and sweet in their thoughts, language and influence.

25. Q. Mention some of the things that in their respective ways and times require the faithful application of sanitary rules. A. The air, the water, the streets and grounds, the clothing and dwellings of individuals, and waste and decaying matters.

26. Q. What should be prevented from defiling the air in any region where it is to be breathed? A. Foul vapors and gases, and smoke and sickening odors.

27. Q. What is said as to the water used for drinking and in households? A. The wells, springs, cisterns, and reservoirs of water used for drinking and in households must always be protected against defilement.

28. Q. Name some articles of food that quickly become unwholesome if in the presence of decaying matter and putrid gases. A. Meats, and especially fish, milk and butter.

29. Q. When are the pathways and grounds about dwellings, and all roadways, best kept clean and free from nuisance? A. When so graded and sloped as to give easy surface drainage for the water.

30. Q. How are the freshness and healthfulness of paths and grounds improved? A. By an occasional layer of fine gravel; but never by sawdust, chips, or planks.

31. Q. What is the best of sanitary rules for all undergarments? A. The modern practice of boiling as well as washing.

32. Q. What are some of the essential means of cleanliness of habitations? A. Through-and-through ventilation, sunlight, the hot scrubbing of wood floors, and the wiping and dusting of walls.

33. Q. What is said of the putrescence of refuse materials used for food? A. It is not only excessively offensive, but may be the cause of sudden and even fatal sickness.

34. Q. How has many a valuable life been lost and many a family prostrated by sudden sickness? A. By the putrid emanations of a few bushels of rotting potatoes or cabbages, or by putrid animal matters and melons, in cellars or store-rooms.

35. Q. What should be done in regard to sewerage matter if it is not completely washed away by flowing water? A. It should be led, in tubes, to porous grounds at least two hundred yards away from the house.

36. Q. What are essential for every person and every dwelling in order to secure purity and health? A. Pure water and fresh air, and means for applying these elements for cleansing.

37. Q. What allowance of water is needed by every individual who is to be kept perfectly clean in person, clothing and premises? A. From twenty to thirty gallons daily.

38. Q. How much fresh air should every person have supplied every minute? A. From twenty-five to one hundred cubic feet.

39. Q. What is necessary as well as ventilation for preserving the cleanliness and purity of a dwelling or any apartment? A. Sunlight.

40. Q. What habit and duty should be established by all? A. The habit and duty of revolting against foul or stagnant air.

41. Q. What study should be established by all? A. The study of available means for supplying fresh air.

42. Q. For what are disinfectants not a substitute? A. They are not a substitute for cleanliness, and the use of water and fresh air, which are the great purifiers.

43. Q. What is the most important use of disinfectants? A. It is that which destroys the infections and invisible virus of the contagious or infectious diseases.

44. Q. What are the principal disinfecting agents employed? A. Heat and chemical substances.

45. Q. What is it found that boiling heat will destroy? A. Infectious or contagious virus in clothing and infected apartments.

46. Q. What are some of the chemical substances used as disinfectants? A. Sulphate of zinc, carbonate of soda, chloride of lime, and carbolic acid.

47. Q. How is the special drying of a damp apartment best secured? A. By the continual and strong currents of air, blowing through and through.

48. Q. What proportion of the volume is air contained in the grounds upon which we walk, or that are under and about our houses? A. It is found to be nearly one-fifth of the entire volume or quantity of every solid foot or yard of earth.

49. Q. How is this air clean and fresh, or impure and sickening? A. According to the condition of the grounds and the places out of which it comes.

50. Q. Like habits of personal virtue and the right use of our time and thoughts, what will these habits of cleanliness and the sanitary regulation of houses become? A. Sources of personal and domestic happiness and health.

OUTLINE OF C. L. S. C. STUDIES.

APRIL.

For the month of April the required C. L. S. C. reading comprises two of the Hampton Tracts—No. 5, A Haunted House, and No. 9, Cleanliness and Disinfection—and the designated reading in THE CHAUTAUQUAN. The following is the division of the work for the month according to weeks:

FIRST WEEK—1. Hampton Tract, No. 5, A Haunted House.

2. Russian History, in THE CHAUTAUQUAN.

3. Sunday Reading, selection for April 1, in THE CHAUTAUQUAN.

SECOND WEEK—1. Hampton Tract, No. 9, Cleanliness and Disinfection.

2. Scandinavian History and Literature, in THE CHAUTAUQUAN.

3. Sunday Reading, selection for April 8, in THE CHAUTAUQUAN.

THIRD WEEK—1. Readings in Physiology, in THE CHAUTAUQUAN.

2. Pictures from English History, in THE CHAUTAUQUAN.

3. Sunday Reading, selection for April 15, in THE CHAUTAUQUAN.

FOURTH WEEK—1. Selections from English Literature, in THE CHAUTAUQUAN. [See page 423.]

2. Sunday Readings, selections for April 22 and 29, in THE CHAUTAUQUAN.

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Poesy is a beauteous young lady, chaste, honorable, discreet, witty, retired, and who keeps herself within the limits of the strictest discretion; she is the friend of solitude, fountains entertain her, meadows console her, woods free her from ennui, flowers delight her; and, in short, she gives pleasure and instruction to all with whom she communicates.—_Cervantes._

THOMAS HOOD.[N]

I have a delightful rather than a difficult, or even a delicate duty to perform in speaking of those remains of Hood which are not in the keeping of the graveyard’s silent warders, but in the custody of ever-living generations of men and women. I have at this day no intelligent opinions of Thomas Hood’s ability and achievements to oppose; no detractions from his just and symmetrical fame to rebuke; no reluctant acknowledgments of his mastership to stimulate. The most that can be done now for the dear, dead poet, is to waft his fame, on the breath of honest applause, to circles of men outside of the serried ranks which have already closed in upon his shrine.

It appears from the researches of his children that he was born May 23, 1799.

It rarely happens in the history of genius that the verdict of posterity becomes unanimous within its own generation. Yet, this is true of Thomas Hood. He was, indeed, broadly and lovingly appreciated in life, and he had not been long dead when every murmur of doubt, every dissonance of judgment concerning his kingship among the humorous poets of the nineteenth century, died away. Where now he is not admired and extolled and loved for what he did for letters and humanities, let us charitably suppose he is only _not known_. Of him it is preëminently true,

“None know him but to love him; None name him but to praise.”

I have no hesitation in making my discourse this afternoon his eulogy. If I could not have praised him as a matchless humorist, as a great poet, and as a noble example of manhood, I would have kept silence concerning him.

No name in the literary annals of our century better deserves to be inscribed upon the hearts of the people than does his. He was the friend of the people, and of all the motley he chose to wear, no garb better fitted him, or was more commonly worn, than that of brotherly kindness. This, indeed, he always wore, like a close-fitting tunic, and even when the gay tissues and tinsel of Momus or Harlequin glittered upon the outside, the cerement of charity was between them and his bosom.

The chief reputation Hood achieved in his lifetime was not that which now cleaves to his name. He was known and admired for what is, however admirable in itself, the lesser of his two great gifts. These were wit and poetry, and he shone most to the public eye in the former. I have pronounced him a matchless humorist and a great poet. The proof of my words must be sought in his works.

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He was as peculiar in his humor as he was in his character. His passion for punning was never exceeded, perhaps. It would have aroused all the dogmatism of Dr. Johnson’s elephantine nature to explosive indignation against him. Looked at superficially, very much of what Hood wrote appears to be the veriest wantoning of verbal merriment. There are whole volumes of prose and verse, in which he seems to riot in fun, and to ransack the English language for sounds and synonyms of nonsense; but, even in his wildest abandonment to the mood of mirth, there is discoverable a method in his madness, a meaning in his mummery, which is the token of a great brain, throbbing under the jester’s plume, and of a noble heart beating right humanly beneath the mummer’s spangled vest.

The world at first mistook him, no doubt, for a literary harlequin, a poetical pranker, at whose antics they were called upon to laugh only. The admirable humorist lived to see their great mistake rectified, and to behold

“Laughter, holding both his sides,”

not infrequently lift his restraining hands to eyes all suddenly dashed with great blinding tears, or to a bosom growing tempestuous with sighs and throes of human sympathy.

Yet there were not, I think, two distinct sides to Hood’s nature, as some of the earlier critics said, to account for the mysterious pathos welling up from the founts of his wit, but rather a unique single, capable of many manifestations seemingly distinct and diverse, and even antagonistic, but all alike, whether grave or gay, imaginative or practical, comic or tragic—phases only of a homogeneous soul.

It was truly said of him that he introduced comedy and tragedy to each other, and taught them to live together in a cordial union. When his most whimsical poems are scanned, for the discovery, not of their feet, but of their feeling, they reveal his heart beneath the rattling ribs of verbiage.

In that extraordinary poem, “Miss Killmansegg and her Precious Leg,” which to the hasty or over-serious reader seems only a foolish though glittering pageant of rhetorical figures and fancies, a motley troop of “whims and oddities,” there is nevertheless a deep vein of wisdom, which, if visible nowhere else, leads plainly enough to the surface in the terribly grotesque catastrophe. The heroine having lost a member by a casualty, wore instead of it a leg of gold, which she laid under her pillow at night, to keep it from the clutches of her spendthrift lord, who had hinted to her—

—In language low, That her precious leg was precious slow, A good ’un to look at, but bad to go, And kept quite a sum lying idle. That instead of playing musical airs, Like Colin’s foot in going up-stairs, As the wife in the Scottish ballad declares— It made an infernal stumping; Whereas a member of cork, or wood, Would be lighter and cheaper, and quite as good, Without the unbearable thumping.

Dissensions ripened into quarrels. The countess, in her anger, destroyed her will, which act hastened the dreadful end. That night her sleep was broken;—

’Twas a stir at her pillow she felt, And some object before her glittered. ’Twas the golden leg!—she knew its gleam, And up she started, and tried to scream; But e’en in the moment she started— Down came the limb with a frightful smash, And, lost in the universal flash, That her eyeballs made at so mortal a crash, The spark, called vital departed!

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Gold, still gold! hard, yellow and cold, For gold she had lived, and she died for gold, By a golden weapon—not oaken. In the morning they found her all alone, Stiff and bloody, and cold as a stone— But her leg, the golden leg, was gone, And the “golden bowl” was broken! Gold—still gold! it haunted her yet— At the “Golden Lion” the inquest met, Its foreman and carver and gilder— And the jury debated, from twelve till three, What their verdict ought to be, And they brought it in a _felo-de-se_, Because her own leg had killed her!

And here follows what the poet designates “Her Moral:”—

Gold! gold! gold! gold! Bright and yellow, hard and cold, Molten, graven, hammered and rolled, Heavy to get, and light to hold, Hoarded, bartered, bought, and sold, Stolen, borrowed, squandered, doled: Spurned by the young, but hugged by the old, E’en to the verge of the church-yard’s mould; Price of many a crime untold: Gold! gold! gold! gold! Good or bad a thousand-fold— How widely its agencies vary, To save, to ruin, to curse, to bless;— As even its minted coins express, Now stamped with the image of Good Queen Bess, And now of a Bloody Mary.

The bulk of his production is expressed with the same levity which strikes the ear, as in the verses just quoted. He was unquestionably the greatest trafficker in words of double meaning the world had ever known. His stock was exhaustless, and whether home-made or far-fetched, his _mots_ and _jeux_ were sure of currency.

The secret of the perpetual playfulness of his pen is to be found in the eagerness of the public mind to be moved to mirth, and in his need to minister to the mood of the public mind. In a word, he was dependent upon his brain for his bread. Labor was his law, and so, as it befel, humor and mirth became his profits. His puns (so easily spun from himself,) were transmuted into pence and pounds. His quips looked quaintly ahead to quarter-day. His grotesque metaphors were sold in the street, like plaster images, for a livelihood. Had he been less under constraint to please the public ear, he would have wrought, perchance, one dull epic, instead of a thousand delicious epigrams.

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His writings are indeed light, but in a double sense. They are light with the buoyancy of the zephyr or of the gossamer wafted in its bosom. They are light also with the luminousness of the sun-beam, kindling beauty and light and warmth as it flashes along its track. The writings of Hood are to be laughed at, but they who only laugh at them have no true appreciation of their subtle power. They disparage them for their mirthfulness, because they can not discover the depths below the dimpling surface of their rolling humor.

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His description of a November fog, in London, must be familiar to many of you, but I will venture to quote it in illustration of his facility in rhyming, and also of his skill in supplying the details of a picture which is all painted only in shadows. It is entitled,

“NOVEMBER.”

No sun—no moon— No morn—no noon,— No dawn—no dark—no proper time of day,— No sky—no earthly view,— No distance looking blue,— No road—no street—no “’t other side the way,”— No end to any row,— No indications where the crescents go,— No top to any steeple,— No recognitions of familiar people,— No courtesies for showing ’em,— No knowing ’em. No traveling at all—no locomotion,— No inkling of the way—no motion,— “No go”—by land or ocean,— No mail—no post,— No news from any foreign coast,— No park—no ring—no afternoon gentility,— No company—no nobility,— No warmth, no cheerfulness, no healthful ease,— No comfortable feel in any member,— No shade, no shine, no butterflies, no bees,— No fruits, no flowers, no leaves, no birds,— November.

Transitions from gay to grave are so much in the manner of Hood that you will not wonder if I sandwich between the playful production of his muse just quoted, and another still more grotesque to follow, an example of his verse, in which the bizarre yields entirely to the beautiful, the tricksy to the true, leaving “a gem of purest ray serene” for the coronal of pastoral poetry. It is the charming idyl,

“RUTH.”

She stood breast-high amid the corn, Clasped by the golden light of morn, Like the sweetheart of the sun, Who many a glowing kiss had won.

On her cheek an autumn flush, Deeply ripened,—such a blush In the midst of brown was born, Like red poppies grown with corn.

Round her eyes her tresses fell, Which were blackest none could tell, But long lashes veiled a light That had else been all too bright.

And her hat, with shady brim, Made her tressy forehead dim;— Thus she stood amid the stooks, Praising God with sweetest looks:—

“Sure,” I said, “heaven did not mean Where I reap thou shouldst but glean, Lay thy sheaf down, and come, Share my harvest and my home.”

I hoped to find time for quoting one of his numerous ballads, in which he not only displays his facility in punning, and satirizes the lachrymose style of ballad verse prevalent at that period, but I must content myself with reciting the oft-repeated stanza with which one of his best ballads closes, burdened with the fate of Ben, the jilted sailor-boy:—

His death, which happened in his berth, At forty-odd befell: They went and told the sexton, And the sexton tolled the bell.

If I were required to indicate that one of all Hood’s poems in which the humor is the maddest and merriest, I think I should, in spite of embarrassment, choose “the tale of a trumpet,” which, like the story of Miss Kilmansegg, rides double, and carries a moral behind it. Dame Eleanor Spearing, who was too excessively deaf to hear the scandals narrated in her presence, was beset by a peddler, who, with many arts and pleas, prevailed upon her to buy of him a marvelous ear-trumpet. From that time the dame heard sad and shocking tales at the village fire-sides, and, of course, repeated them, until the place was filled with “confusion worse confounded,” and in Hood’s own words:—

In short, to describe what came to pass In a true, though somewhat theatrical way, Instead of “Love in a Village”—alas! The piece they performed was “The Devil to Pay.”

The discovery is soon made that the dame’s diabolical trumpet has blown all this mischief, and a condign fate overtakes the unhappy old woman. She is seized by the populace and dragged to the pond just as the peddler who sold her the horn makes his appearance, but—

“Before she can utter the name of the d— Her head is under the water level!”

The moral of the story points itself, but you can afford to listen to the humorist’s quaint phrasing of it:

“There are folks about town—to name no names— Who greatly resemble this deafest of dames; And over their tea, and muffins and crumpets, Circulate many a scandalous word, And whisper tales they could only have heard Through some such diabolical trumpet.”

I did not interrupt the outlines of the story to illustrate its wonderful plethora of puns and pranks, but you will not be averse to a moment’s delay here for a taste of its quaint quality. It is altogether a piece of poetical pyrotechny, in which there are verbal rockets, and serpents, and stars and blue-lights, and double-headers; but, as in many of his poems, the humor seems to go off chiefly with the giddy sparkling whirl and whiz of metrical Catherine wheels. The peddler commends his marvelous trumpet to the dame so marvelously deaf:—

“It’s not the thing for me—I know it— To crack my own trumpet up, and blow it; But it is the best, and time will show it. There was Mrs. F., So very deaf, That she might have worn a percussion cap, And been knocked on the head without hearing it snap. Well, I sold her a horn, and the very next day She heard—from her husband at Botany Bay! Come—eighteen shillings—that’s very low, You’ll save the money as shillings go,— And I never knew so bad a lot,— By hearing whether they ring or not! Eighteen shillings! it’s worth the price, Supposing you’re delicate-minded and nice, To have the medical man of your choice, Instead of the one with the strongest voice— Who comes and asks you how’s your liver, And where you ache, and whether you shiver, And as to your nerves, so apt to quiver, As if he was hailing a boat on a river! And then, with a shout, like Pat in a riot, Tells you to ‘Keep yourself perfectly quiet!’”

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