Take our own office. The window swings on a central pivot. The beauty of this system is that you can get more air this way in a shorter time than by any other expedient short of removing the side wall. But you can't get just a little air. Either you don't get any at all, or you get a tornado that lifts you out of your seat by the back-hair.
Of course, the system has one advantage—you can aim the draught. By setting the window at the correct angle, you can switch an aerial Niagara into the next office, from which it comes back slightly warmed up and as a rule highly flavored with cigarette smoke and profanity. This vicarious ventilation, so to speak, has its advantages, but it is apt to lead to reprisals—and not always in kind. Some son of a gun, for instance, slipped into our office this afternoon and stole all our matches. We know they weren't blown away, for they were in a drawer.
While we feel keenly on this subject of ventilation and believe that the thing is being greatly overdone, we don't wish to write ourself down as entirely opposed to fresh air. Some concessions must be made to the popular hygiene of the day. All that we ask for is reasonable moderation. We don't mind a nice little draught slipping into the room from time to time, so long as it comes in quietly and unnoticeably. What we hate is the sort of draught that leaps at the back of our neck and shoves an icy mitt down our collar.
Personally, we look forward to the time—will the reader please excuse us for a moment? The chap in the office next door has just opened his pivot window again, and has blown our hat, ten pages of this manuscript, a dollar bill, and seventeen cents' worth of postage stamps down the corridor. We are going in to speak to him about it.
(We are taking a paper-weight with us).
CITY CHICKENS
City Chickens
For a long time we have wanted to write about urban poultry; but we have been too nervous to start. It may seem to the reader that we are carrying our natural delicacy too far and are becoming almost prudish, but the fact remains that we were afraid to write about city chickens for fear of being misunderstood.
You see the word "chicken" has acquired ramifications of meaning which have nothing whatever to do with Plymouth Rocks, or Silver Wyandottes, or Buff Cochins, or any of the other standard breeds of hen. It occurred to us, therefore, that if we were to start an article about keeping chickens and dressing chickens and that sort of thing, readers of a precipitous turn of mind might jump to indecorous conclusions.