As an example of what I mean, a short time ago I had to preside over a meeting which was held in a large room—­one of two built exactly alike, and in communication with each other by means of folding doors.  These rooms formed part of one of the best hotels in London—­let us call it the “Magnificent.”  Of course, it was lighted by electric glow lamps, in accordance with the latest fashion in that department of artificial lighting, viz., suspension lamps, in which the glow lamps grew out of leaves and scrolls, twisted and twirled in and out, very much after the pattern of our most aesthetic gas lamps, which, of course, are in the style of the most artistic (late eighteenth century) oil lamps, which were in imitation of the most classic Roman lamps, which followed the Persian, and so on back to the time of Tubal Cain, the great arch-artificer in metals, who most likely copied in metal some lamps he had seen in shells or flints.  Both rooms were heated by means of the good old blazing coal fire so dear to a Briton’s heart; and they were ventilated with all due regard to the latest state of knowledge on the subject among architects and builders.  In fact, no pains had been spared to make these rooms comfortable in the highest acceptation of the word.

There were, some of our members remarked, no gas burners to heat and deteriorate the atmosphere, or to blacken the ceilings; and therefore, under the brilliant sparkle of glow lamps, the summit of such human felicity as is expected by a body of eighteen or twenty business men, intent on dispatching business and restoring the lost tissue by means of a nice little dinner afterward, ought, according to the calculations of the architect of the building, to have been reached.  I instance this case because it is a typical one, which, under most aspects, does not materially differ from the conditions of home life in such residences as those whose occupiers are likely to use electric lighting.  The rooms were spacious (about 20 feet by 35 feet, and about 15 feet high); and they were lighted during the day by means of large lantern ceiling-lights, with double glass windows.  The evening in question was chilly, not to say cold.

Upon commencing our business, we all admired the comfort of the room; but as time went on, most of the company began to complain of a little draught on the head and back of the neck.  The draught, which at first was only a suspicion, became a certainty, and in another hour or so, by the time our business was over, notwithstanding a screen placed before the door, and a blazing fire, we were delighted to make a change to the comfortable dining-room, which communicated with the room we had just left by means of folding doors, closed with the exception of just sufficient space left at one end of the room to allow a waiter to pass in and out.  Very curiously, before the soup was finished, we became aware that the candles which assisted the electric glow lamps (merely for artistic effect) began to flare