Daily Kennebec journal. [microfilm reel] (Augusta, Me.) 1870-1975, 1877-08-28
NO. 2o3
Iales aud Sketthes.
GAS AND KEROSENE STOVES.
now THEY HAVE COME TNrO USE AND ARE
GROWING IN POPULARITY.

GROWING IN POPULARITY.
Few modern inventions have stronger
hold upon the affections OF women than
the kerosene and gas stoves which have
come into vogue within few years.
Before the introduction of these stoves,
it was no light thing to prepare even
tea in dog days. The preparation of
tea requires fire, and the building of
fire on "a hut August afternoon, in city or
country was and is burden grievous to be
borne. If, in the country, the wood-box
is Invariably found empty, and it is necessa-
ry to go out to the woodpile and pick up
chips with which to coax green wood into
an unwilling blaze; in the city. the situa-
ton is, II anything worse OF course
there is the stove to be- ''shaken down."
which means shaking the ashes out of the
stove into the room. This nearly accom-
plished, clinker seizes the CRATE and
hangs on like an agent. You give the
CRATE terrific wrench, and, just at that
instant, the handle comes off and you bang
your hand against the open door and i'm
print long black line one on each of your
last available pair of cuffs. About Sec
ond after the the clinker comes out then
the fire-box is strewn with paper and filed
with kindling and charcoal. You light
match, and poke the lighted end through
the 'iront draft in the hope of lighting the
paper. Vain hope! The match loses fire
In the eighteenth part of second. Then
You light another match and drop it down
through the kindings toward the paper,
but the matchtalls on the largest kindlings
in the stove, and burns peacefully out.
Then desperately the kindlings are pushed
one side, another match is applied, and a
pleasant cracking gives pleasant con-
sciousness OF victory at last The flames
fill the fire-box, and you pour half hod
OF anthracite coal into the stove. The
pleasant cracking suddenly stops. You
wait two very long minutes and then take
off the stove cover TO find only small
remnant OF fire dying out in one corner
OF a splinter.
Occasions like these have made gas and
kerosene stoves a necessity. With the lat
ter it Is only to turn a screw and light
match, and the cheerful, continuous flame
comes forth. No wonder such stove be-
came popular and grew perfect! The
summer stove OF to-day is Ingenious and
elaborate. 1t can be had in a shape
adapted TO almost any purpose from the
single spindle over which a tea-kettle may
be boiled, up to the four-burner stove,
which boils, and steams, and toasts and
bakes all at once. 1t used to be supposed
that gas was too expensive for poor folks
fuel, but that idea has been displaced by
the inexorable logic of figures, showing
that 1t is much cheaper as well as much
easier to boil tea-kettle" or bake biscuit
with gas than to build new fire of coal
for that purpose" s'aH
There have been good many kinds of
gas stoves patented first and last, and it
is with them as with sewing machines
people are apt to like the kind with which
they are familiar. The Dome stove had
an extended run in the market, and, of late,
the Retort stove has been very popular.
Gas stoves vary in cost from 81 80 for the
"kettle boiler" to 50 for TIE three-burner
stove with which baking and boiling can
be carried on very we'll at once. Almost
the only complaint made against gas
stoves have been that sometimes it seemed
to be impossible to get heat enough from
them 20 keep the cooking active. The
difficulty in such cases has generally been
that the burner through which the gas en-
tered the tubing, " as too small. Difficult
ties in cooking arising from lack of gas
have usually been remedied by putting a
larger burner on the gas pipe.
One curious thing has been noticad in
the sale OF the Retort stoves. The oven
of this stove has window through which
The progress of baking can be inspected
without opening the oven door. People
who have bought the Retort have in sew
eral cases returned to the seller to COM
plain that the window in the stove was
Imperfect, that is, it was loose. Here
by hangs tale. When the inventor of
the stove was getting up the oven. he was
determined to have a window in it; but,
however he al 'anged tire window. when
ever the air in the stove grew hot, the
glass would break. After "a great many
unsuccessful trials. it flashed upon the in
ventor's mind one day, that by holding
the glass with tlange, and yet leaving
it loose in its sash, it would have room to
expand with the heat, and it would not
break So thought so done; and the
''imperlect" window in the inventors
highly esteemed triumph,
Kerosene sto res are especially for coIn-
try use, and they are very much like a
Kerosene lamp on large scale. Some of
them are made of iron, and look like lit
tie coal stove. with an uncommonly well
developed ashbox; others are of tin,
and are rather nondescript. TIE kerosene
stove has tin oven, which would delight
the heart of one of those household
prophets who proclaim with regard to all
kinds OF ancient ''truck': don't throw
it away. for you'll want it within seven
years or, if you don't, turn it and let it lie
seven years more, and by that time it will
surely be of use" Some of the tin ovens
of to-day are almost reproduction of the
tin ovens which superseded the board on
which some OF us can re member seeing
Johnny cakes baked before al open fire.
If anybody has saved their tin oven of
1915. it will. perhaps, save them the ne
cessity OF having an oven for their kero-
sene stove in 1877. 1t is claimed that a
meal-a rather small meal-can be cooked
with gas stove for about two cents. The
kerosene stove is undeniably the cheaper
OF the two, so that one had need TO live
where wood is very cheap indeed, to fied
1t even profitable to get along without
kerosene stove. The cheapest pattern of
a kerosene stove costs abolt 100, aud