What do you say to steam?

How shall I ventilate?

Will it answer to have the ventilating flues in the outer walls?

There seems to be no doubt that the foul air should be drawn from the
bottom of a room; but if it's cold, how am I to get it to the
ventilator on the top of the house? If a room is as tight as a
fruit-can, a chimney might draw like a yoke of oxen without doing any
good, and Nebuchadnezzar's furnace wouldn't drive air into it unless,
in both cases, the inlets and outlets were about equal! When I go to
sleep in such a room I want to be sure the dampers won't get
accidentally shut.

Give me your opinion on these points, but don't make a long story or a
tough one. If a house is to be kept warm from turret to
foundation-stone, I don't see that shutting up the spaces between the
timbers would amount to much, except to stop sounds from echoing
through them; but when the attic is as cold as out-doors, it's plain
that the cold air will be always crawling down next the inside
plastering of every room in the house if it finds a chance.

Yours,

JOHN.