On a recent Sabbath evening, a house of worship in St. Anthony was closely crowded. The night was very cold, and the stoves were well stuffed. Ample provision had been made for ventilation in the structure of the windows, which let down from the top, and one of them chanced to be dropped a few inches, furnishing the only exit for foul air, or inlet for fresh air, for the lungs of five hundred people. One enterprising young gentleman rose and drew the pulley, closing this only air-hole. With what an ineffable look of satisfaction he resumed his seat, as though he had done an important public service.

The officiating clergyman was earnest, instructive, persuasive. But he was nearly prostrated by the labors of weeks, and standing in the hot and polluted air he struggled hard for breath, and must have made immense drafts upon his own nervous system in order to maintain the high tone of religious fervor indicated by his discourse. Poor man, he was being poisoned. And all the audience, though in different degrees, must have felt the stupefying influence of that foul atmosphere, reeking with the excretions of so many breaths, yet forced in upon the lungs again and again. - Some grew sleepy, and a few made a regular nap of it; while even the lamps grew dim, for want of oxygen.

When will men learn that the blessed air was made on purpose for them to breathe? - When will they cease to convert the houses of worship into styes whose stenchful fumes poison the blood and unfit the brain for regular and healthful thought? When will our ministers understand that religion itself requires us to cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh as well as of the spirit; and that the highest forms of Christian life can be secured only by the union of a sound mind with a sound body?

In a physiological point of view, it is not easy to calculate the mischief accomplished by all our crowded public gatherings. A series of concerts, balls, political rallies, or revival meetings, held in a close room, does more for the destruction of public health than can be [remedied] by all the doctors in a twelve-month. A few evenings since, I set out to attend another of the St. Anthony churches; but, though it was early in the evening when I reached the door, my [olifactories] were saluted by a current of such hot and noisome gas that I was glad to take to my heels. And indeed, I am almost provoked into saying that if the people who hold meetings want to do me any good thereby, they must make such provision for my accomodation as will ensure me something like free play for my breathing apparatus. Only think of Woodman's new Hall made as tight as a sealed fruit-can! Think of the elegant audience room of the Universalist church, with a few breathing-holes, such as would no more than answer the demands of a congregation of mice! I can eat off from the same plate, drink out of the same glass, bear to be crowded into half a chair; but I declare I can't get reconciled to using the very same air which has just passed up and down the wind-pipes and in and out of the months of a hundred tobacco-users, a hundred whisky-soakers, fifty persons with rotten teeth and sour stomachs, and two hundred decent people, who can't help the fouling the air, even though they are ever so healthy.

Permit me to close by reminding the reader that, according to the settled testimony of the wise men and writers on health and disease, "every pair of lungs vitiates a hogshead of air every hour, by withdrawing from it half its oxygen, and replacing it with the same quantity of carbonic acid." And let me also add, on my personal responsibility, that not one of us will ever die, so long as we have pure air, and keep breathing it!

Yours for a well developed

THORAX.