Fasten a chimney-board against the fireplace, so as to prevent foul air from escaping in the night. You will, of course, have no hole through the wall into the chimney; and no sane man, in the night season, would have a door or window open. Use no perforated zinc in paneling; especially avoid it in small bedrooms. So you will get a room full of bad air. But in the same room there is bad, worse, and worst: your object is to have the worst air possible. Suffocating machines are made by every upholsterer; attach one to your bed; it is an apparatus of poles, rings, and curtains. By drawing your curtains around you before you sleep, you insure to yourself a condensed body of foul air over your person. This poison vapor-bath you will find to be most efficient when it is made of any thick material.
There being transpiration through the skin, it would not be a bad idea to see whether this can not be in some way hindered. The popular method will do very well: smother the flesh as much as possible in feathers. A wandering princess, in some fairy tale, came to a king's house. The king's wife, with the curiosity and acuteness proper to her sex, desired to know whether their guest was truly born a princess, and discovered how to solve the question. She put three peas on the young lady's paillasse, and over them a large feather-bed, and then another, then another—in fact, fifteen feather-beds. Next morning the princess looked pale, and, in answer to inquiries how she had passed the night, said that she had been unable to sleep at all, because the bed had lumps in it. The king's wife knew then that their guest showed her good breeding. Take this high-born lady for a model. The feathers retain all heat about your body, and stifle the skin so far effectually, that you awake in the morning pervaded by a sense of languor, which must be very agreeable to a person who has it in his mind to be unhealthy. In order to keep a check upon exhalation about your head (which otherwise might have too much the way of Nature), put on a stout, closely-woven night-cap. People who are at the height of cleverness in this respect sleep with their heads under the bed-clothes. Take no rest on a hair-mattress; it is elastic and pleasant, certainly, but it does not encase the body; and therefore you run a risk of not awaking languid.
Never wash when you go to bed; you are not going to see any body, and therefore there can be no use in washing. In the morning, wet no more skin than you absolutely must—that is to say, no more than your neighbors will see during the day—the face and hands. So much you may do with a tolerably good will, since it is the other part of the surface of the body, more covered and more impeded in the full discharge of its functions, which has rather the more need of ablution; it is therefore fortunate that you can leave that other part unwashed. Five minutes of sponging and rubbing over the whole body in the morning would tend to invigorate the system, and would send you with a cheerful glow to the day's business or pleasure. Avoid it by all means, if you desire to be unhealthy. Let me note here, that in speaking of the poor, we should abstain from ceding to them an exclusive title, as “the Great Unwashed.” Will you, Mr. N. or M., retire into your room and strip? Examine your body; is it clean—was it sponged this morning—is there no dirt upon it any where? If it be not clean, if it was not sponged, if water would look rather black after you had enjoyed a thorough scrub in it, then is it not obvious that you yourself take rank among the Great Unwashed? By way of preserving a distinction between them and us, I even think it would be no bad thing were we to advocate the washing of the poor.
Do not forget that, although you must unfortunately apply water to your face you can find warrant in custom to excuse you from annoying it with soap; and for the water again, you are at liberty to take vengeance by obtaining compensation damages out of that part of your head which the hair covers. Never wash it; soil it; clog it with oil or lard—either of which will answer your purpose, as either will keep out air as well as water, and promote the growth of a thick morion of scurf. Lard in the [pg 619] bedroom is called bear's grease. In connection with its virtues in promoting growth of hair, there is a tale which I believe to be no fiction; not the old and profane jest of the man who rubbed a deal box with it over-night, and found a hair-trunk in the morning. It is said that the first adventurer who advertised bear's grease for sale, appended to the laudation of its efficacy a Nota Bene, that gentlemen, after applying it, should wash the palms of their hands, otherwise the hair would sprout thence also. I admire that speculator, grimly satiric at the expense both of himself and of his customers. He jested at his own pretensions; and declared, by an oblique hint, that he did not look for friends among the scrupulously clean.
Tooth-powder is necessary in the bedroom. Healthy stomachs will make healthy teeth, and then a tooth-brush and a little water may suffice to keep them clean. But healthy stomachs also make coarse constitutions. It is vexatious that our teeth rot when we vitiate the fluid that surrounds them. As gentlemen and ladies we desire good teeth; they must be scoured and hearth-stoned.
Of course, as you do not cleanse your body daily, so you will not show favor to your feet. Keep up a due distinction between the upper and lower members. When a German prince was told confidentially that he had dirty hands, he replied, with the liveliness of conscious triumph,
“Ach, do you call dat dirty? You should see my toes!”
Some people wash them once in every month; that will do very well; or once a year, it matters little which. In what washing you find yourself unable to omit, use only the finest towels, those which inflict least friction on the skin.
Having made these arrangements for yourself, take care that they are adhered to, as far is may be convenient, throughout your household.
Here and there, put numerous sleepers into a single room; this is a good thing for children, if you require to blanch them. By a little perseverance, also, in this way, when you have too large a family, you can reduce it easily. By all means, let a baby have foul air, not only by the use of suffocative apparatus, but by causing it to sleep where there are four or five others in a well-closed room. So much is due to the maintenance of our orthodox rate of infant mortality.