lander, Goelet, or Lorillard estates. They are situated in fashionable sections, and command a high rental. The plumbing is often elaborate, and was originally of average good quality. Sanitary science, however, has made such rapid strides of late, that the materials, appliances, and methods of ventilating fixtures and pipes in use ten, or even five years ago, to afford security against sewer-gas, are now obsolete. Plumbing practice in the past was based on English experience, and has been largely modified to suit our climate and domestic habits, while experience has shown the necessity of using heavier material, better and more costly fixtures, and more elaborate methods of trapping and ventilation. As the lead soil-pipes, brick and stone drains, and cheap and inferior fixtures, to be found in most leased dwellings a decade since, have yielded to the wear and tear of time, landlords have made improvements, but in an economical fashion, having always their own interests in view. It is but natural that property owners should be slow to spend money for the benefit of their tenants. They usually employ a plumber who has sufficient discretion not to put his customer to excessive expense, by doing everything a tenant may want or which his own judgment may tell him should be done to insure safety. The result is systematic patchwork and deception, by which the tenant is frequently led to think that everything has been made right, although dangerous defects still exist. Often, only through the intervention of the Board of Health can landlords be forced to provide improvements. Again, even where a tenant himself pays for needed alterations, the plumber is ashamed to stultify himself, and hence omits to completely cure existing defects. Flagrant cases of this kind have come up in my experience. A gentleman rents a house in the belief that it is in good sanitary condition. He is assured by the landlord that all sanitary safeguards are provided. In time, bad odors are noticed and sickness breaks out. The landlord, when applied to, sends his plumber, who makes some slight changes, pronounces everything all right, and goes his way. Again trouble ensues, the same course is repeated, and finally the landlord declares that nothing more can be done. Recourse may then be had to the Board of Health, whose inspectors will suggest some additional changes, or may not find anything to correct. Finally, a sanitary expert is called in, who usually discovers some serious defects in the drainage arrangements. The tenant is naturally indignant, and asks an

explanation. The landlord refers to his plumber, who, when brought to book, admits that he has considered the interest of his employer alone, and made only such improvements as he thought the latter would approve and pay for.

Within a few years there has been a popular furore in favor of apartment houses, and numbers of flats of colossal proportions and costly construction have been built and quickly leased at high rentals. These buildings, however, are often no better in their sanitary arrangements than the average private dwellings. As a rule, they are overheated, especially the halls; usually there is inadequate ventilation, dark rooms abound, and the plumbing, while claimed to be of the best, is lacking in many essentials. Lastly, there is great danger from fire in these buildings. In more than one large apartment house wooden stair-ways surround elevator shafts, which, as repeated experience has shown, will serve to convey a fire almost instantaneously from cellar to roof. Again, the very care taken to deaden floors and prevent the transmission of sound will make it difficult to alarm the tenants in case of fire. The fact that insurance companies consider apartment houses as extra hazardous risks tells its own story; and the possibility of a fire in some of these huge structures must be anticipated with a dread which the late conflagration in the Cambridge flat more than justifies.

The sanitary condition of the summer homes of our wealthy citizens at the sea-shore and other health resorts is on a par with that of their city residences, with this difference, that the drainage arrangements are usually executed by country plumbers, who are even inferior to city mechanics, while the universal dependence upon leaching, and unventilated cess-pools in proximity to wells and cisterns, is a constant source of danger. The repeated epidemics of typhoid fever and malarial diseases in localities where such conditions prevail, and the fact that visitors are seized with these maladies after their return to the city, are ample evidence of the unhealthfulness of summer resorts. Despite the outdoor life and the exercise which visitors enjoy, it is beyond dispute that the health of the city as a whole is higher than that of the country, and that the risks of a summer spent at so-called health resorts are of a serious nature.

After seeing the ills which beset our wealthy householders in their domestic surroundings, if we visit their counting-rooms and offices, where the male members of the family amass the

wealth so lavishly displayed in their homes, still further surprise is experienced. Take any one of the huge buildings downtown, where hundreds of firms, with their clerks, are daily absorbed in business affairs, and what do we find? Into a vast number of offices the direct rays of the sun never enter, and they are dimly lighted by shafts, by reflectors, or by gas. Their sole dependence for air are windows, which are rarely opened, and which look upon small, dingy courts or narrow, gloomy streets, from which lofty adjacent buildings exclude all light. Ventilation is scarcely known in these places. Elaborate and costly devices are often provided to carry off foul air, but they constantly fail to act, as there is no provision for pure air or for providing heated currents to carry away the impure atmosphere. In the private offices of the heads of firms open fires may give some relief, but steam coils are the main dependence for warmth, and slowly and remorselessly roast the occupants with their dry, unvarying, and debilitating temperature.

Many offices are situated in basements, just over damp cellars; others are off dark, dank halls in close proximity to foul plumbing fixtures; while everywhere the unwholesome fumes from gas-jets, the burnt dust which settles on steam-coils, and the impalpable impurities from samples or goods stored near by, contribute to pollute the atmosphere. Any plumbing is thought to be good enough for business buildings. The wear and tear to which it is exposed from careless clerks and boys, and the neglect of janitors, with the absence of water for flushing, all contribute to make it unwholesome. Furthermore, the sewers are often very bad, in many cases, stone drains roughly constructed, without proper pitch or ventilation, and with no means to keep them free from deposits. They were originally intended to carry off surface water, and are wholly unsuited to convey sewage. There is no barrier to prevent sewer air from finding its way into buildings, nor are soil pipes carried through the roof, of full size to permit its escape into the atmosphere above. Hence such buildings are found saturated with sewer-gas, and their occupants, too absorbed in business cares to heed their unsanitary surroundings, learn only too late what are the physical effects of such exposure.

These conditions undoubtedly explain the worn, weary, blanched, and prematurely aged look of so many business men. The wholesale introduction of steam for heating office buildings

threatens to increase the crop of evils just pointed out, and to intensify the nervous strain which Dr. Weir Mitchell and other specialists note as so destructive to health. Our people are

starving for the want of fresh air, and it is no wonder that the tired broker or merchant, after a toilsome day in his stuffy office, seeks relief in stimulants or becomes the victim of chronic dyspepsia, nervous exhaustion, insomnia, and brain paralysis. Some of the most remarkable examples of unsanitary conditions in my experience have been in business offices, and in more than one instance in new buildings supposed to have perfect plumbing. In the directors' rooms of wealthy corporations and the private offices of bank and insurance presidents these evils are found in their worst form.

Here, then, are certain facts which are sustained by the steady growth of zymotic disease and by the evidence of many observers, who have had like opportunities with myself to inspect dwellings. The question may pertinently be asked, What are our wealthy citizens going to do about it? Will they continue to pursue the ostrich policy which has prevailed of late years with such direful results? In other instances, when large numbers of people have been threatened with danger, societies have been formed to diffuse knowledge and inaugurate reforms. It would, therefore, seem timely to found an Association for Improving the Condition of the Rich, to send missionaries and to diffuse tracts among the benighted class, who, as has been shown, are exposed to such dangers. Undoubtedly the whole community would be interested in so benevolent a movement, and would contribute liberally toward its support.

CHARLES F. WINGATE.

SCIENCE AND PRAYER.

PRESIDENT ANDERSON.

IN our day a class of able men, many of them distinguished scientists, think that the biblical view of prayer is altogether false; that it will do well enough for children and ignorant men and women, but can no longer satisfy the intelligent and the learned. These men represent prayer as futile, because the laws of the material universe are absolutely immutable-nothing can in the least change or modify them; therefore, to pray for rain or for recovery from sickness is as great a folly as it would be to attempt to dam up Niagara with a straw. When the atmospheric conditions are fulfilled, the rain will descend; when the physical and hygienic conditions are suitable, the sick will be restored to health. Yet we must be just to these scientific men. They do not all agree in opinion any more than the theologians do. Some of them are theists: their God is a personal God, who hears prayer. He may, they affirm, in answer to prayer, bestow on men spirital blessings. If they pray for enlightenment, the spirit illuminates their minds; if for forgiveness of sin, that blessing is bestowed and the assurance of it; but, say they, we cannot rationally pray for physical good, for material blessings, since in the material realm all is governed by laws fixed, unchangeable.

Still others affirm that prayer is a rational exercise, not because the petitioner directly receives in answer to his prayer either spiritual or material good, but on account of the reflex influence of prayer in his own mind and heart. It changes him. It lifts him up into communion with Him in whom is "no variableness, neither shadow of turning." No real answer to prayer comes down from God to us, but by prayer we are lifted up toward God and transformed into his likeness. That there is this reflex influence in prayer, no candid observer can for a moment doubt; but that this is all that is implied in answer to prayer, we are not yet ready to admit.