How To Make Home Unhealthy. By Harriet Martineau.
Emperor Yao (very many years B.C.) established a certain custom, which was followed, we are told, by his successors on the throne of China. The custom was this. Outside the hall-door of his palace, he suspended a tablet and a gong; and if one among his subjects felt himself able to suggest a good idea to his ruler, or wished to admonish him of any error in his ways, the critic paid a visit to the palace, wrote what he had to say upon the tablet, battered at the gong, and ran away. The Emperor came out; and then, unless it happened that some scapegrace of a schoolboy had annoyed him by superadding a fly-away knock to a contemptuous hieroglyphic, he gravely profited by any hint the tablets might convey. Not unlike honest, patriarchal Yao is our British Public. It is summoned out to read inscriptions at its door, left there by all who have advice to give or faults to deprecate. The successors of Yao, finding upon their score so many conflicting tales, soon substituted for the gong five instruments of music. It was required, then, that the monitor should distinguish, by the instrument upon which he performed his summons, what particular department of imperial duties it might be to which he desired to call attention. Now not five but fifty voices summon our royal public. One man courts attention with a dulcet strain, one brays, one harps upon a string, another drums. And among those who have of late been busiest in pointing errors out, and drumming at the public's door to have them rectified, are they who profess concern about the Public Health.
For the writer who now proposes to address to you, O excellent Public, through these pages, a Series of Practical Hints as to How to make Home Unhealthy, we would not have you think that he means to be in any respect so troublesome as those Sanitary Instructors. The lion on your knocker gives him confidence; he will leave no disconcerting messages; he will seek to come into your parlor as a friend. A friend he is; for, with a polite sincerity, he will maintain in all his arguments that what you do is what ought always to be done. He knows well that you are not foolish, and perceives, therefore, what end you have in view. He sees that you are impressed deeply with a conviction of the vanity of life; that you desire, accordingly, to prove your wisdom by exhibiting contempt for that which philosopher after philosopher forbids a thoughtful man to cherish. You would be proud to have Unhealthy Homes. Lusty carcases, they are for coarse folk and for the heathen; civilization forbids us to promote animal development. How can a man look spiritual, if he be not sickly? How can a woman—Is not Paris the mode? Go, weigh an elegant Parisienne against a peasant girl from Normandy. It is here proposed, therefore, to honor your discretion by demonstrating publicly how right you are. Some of the many methods by which one may succeed in making Home Unhealthy will be here detailed to you, in order that, as we go on, you may congratulate yourself on feeling how extremely clever you already are in your arrangements. Here is a plain purpose. If any citizen, listening to such lessons, think himself wise, and yet is one who, like good M. Jourdain in the comedy, n'applaudit qu'à contresens—to such a citizen it is enough to say. May much good come of his perversity!