EXPERIMENTS IN VENTILATION.

Evening Star, Issue 3955, 28 October 1875, Page 3

EXPERIMENTS IN VENTILATION.

Judge Pitman recently read a work on ventilation, which impressed him so deeply with the importance of having currents of fresh air in the house, that be determined to ventilate his dwellin'* thoroughly. He concluded that the best way to do this would be to place a blower in the cellar, and he therefore purchased one of those circular fans that are used for supplying steamengines with air. This he planted in the back cellar, and ran the pipe from it to the bed chamber in the second story front. Then ho purchased the right to connect the fan with the steam planing mill in the alley, just back ot him. The connection was made late in the afternoon ; and that night the people at the planing mill had a job of overwork to do, so they started the mill at half-past nine. The judge retires at nine. JTulf-an-hour later he woke from dreaming that lie was sitting on an iceberg fishing in a hurricane. A minute later the covers were blown from the bed ; then Mrs Pitman and the baby were whisked out after the covers, and the judge managed to remain in bed only by holding hard to the bedstead. There was a cyclone coming through

that pipe from the blower in the cellar. i Tim planing mill was working at full speed, and the fan was making 400 revolutions a minute. Just as the judge realised these facts, a blast took the mattniss off and hurled it and the judge over against the wall, and then the current of air caught the bedstead and run that over after him. Mrs Pitman and the baby had retreated to the next room, and both of them were shrieking. Then the tornado blew the lights out, and the jndge desperately felt his way over to the mouth of the pipe in the dark to shut off the draft. It nearly took him off his legs, and he could feel his nightshirt fluttering in the breeze as he scudded along under bare poles. He succeeded in shutting the damper ; but no sooner had he done so than the air blew the damper out of the pipe with a bang and sent it smashing across the room and through the looking-glass upon the bureau. Then the engine in the mill turned on more steam, and the air came out into the apartment with such violence that it tossed the vases off the- mantle, Mew down the portrait of the judge’s father, slammed the doors, rattled the windows, pitched over the chairs, and went whirling up through the house with such violence that it threatened to tear the roof off.

The judge made up liis mind that the fan must be stopped or there would soon be general ruin, and he descended into the cellar to stop it. It was going so fast that he was afraid to touch it, so he got the axe and knocked the pipe to pieces, and that let the simoon loose in the cellar. The manner in which' it went howling around the judge’s bare legs was frightful; and when in his anger he hit the fan with the axe, he disarranged it so that it began to rear and pitch and jump in the dark that he became frightened and went up stairs. They could hear it tearing around in the cellar making the most unearthly noise all night, and a stream of air forced from the back cellar window with such violence that it blew over the judge’s smoke-house and tore up 20ft of grape-arbor. In the morning the cellar looked as if a wagon-load of tigers had been fighting in it, and the blower was found in the coal-bin in a condition of hopeless dilapidation. And now the judge sleeps with all the window shut. Ho says that these theories of ventilation are all bosh, and that if he can only meet the man who wrote the book and recommended steam blowers he will be perfectly happy. He wants to see him about something, and he carries a loaded pistol on his person in case he happens to be introduced to him.