In Winter Their
Interiors Are Warmer And Less Damp Than The Outer Air - Which Is
More Than Can Be Said For The Lands Across The Sea, Where You Have
To Go Outdoors To Thaw.
If there are any outdoor sleeping porches in England I missed them
when I was there; but as regards the ventilation of an English
hotel I may speak with authority, having patronized one.
To begin
with, the windows have heavy shades. Back of these in turn are
folding blinds; then long, close curtains of muslin; then, finally,
thick, manifolding, shrouding draperies of some airproof woolen
stuff. At nighttime the maid enters your room, seals the windows,
pulls down the shades, locks the shutters, closes the curtains,
draws the draperies - and then, I think, calks all the cracks with
oakum. When the occupant of that chamber retires to rest he is
as hermetic as old Rameses the First, safe in his tomb, ever dared
to hope to be. That reddish aspect of the face noted in connection
with the average Englishman is not due to fresh air, as has been
popularly supposed; it is due to the lack of it. It is caused by
congestion. For years he has been going along, trying to breathe
without having the necessary ingredients at hand.
At that, England excels the rest of Europe in fresh air, just as
it excels it in the matter of bathing facilities. There is some
fresh air left in England - an abundant supply in warm weather, and
a stray bit here and there in cold. On the Continent there is
none to speak of.
Chapter IV
Jacques, the Forsaken
In Germany the last fresh air was used during the Thirty Years'
War, and there has since been no demand for any. Austria has no
fresh air at all - never did have any, and therefore has never felt
the need of having any. Italy - the northern part of it anyhow - is
also reasonably shy of this commodity.
In the German-speaking countries all street cars and all railway
trains sail with battened hatches. In their palmiest days the
Jimmy Hope gang could not have opened a window in a German sleeping
car - not without blasting; and trying to open a window in the
ordinary first or second class carriage provides healthful exercise
for an American tourist, while affording a cheap and simple form
of amusement for his fellow passengers. If, by superhuman efforts
and at the cost of a fingernail or two, he should get one open,
somebody else in the compartment as a matter of principle, immediately
objects; and the retired brigadier-general, who is always in charge
of a German train, comes and seals it up again, for that is the
rule and the law; and then the natives are satisfied and sit in
sweet content together, breathing a line of second-handed air that
would choke a salamander.
Once, a good many years ago - in the century before the last I think
it was - a member of the Teutonic racial stock was accidentally
caught out in the fresh air and some of it got into his lungs.
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