Middletown transcript., 1893-10-28
A Plea for the cheefal Blaze on the
Hearth, without which Home is
Not Home-when the summer Goes
and the storms or Autumn Come.

month.
But we see you're going, and, besides,
you're looking rather coldly on us now.
The smiles with which yon greeted us,
some eight or nine short weeks ago, are but
memory now, and pretty soon, we know,
you'll leave us in dread winters icy COM
pany
But as you go. you tickle girl with wan
ing smile and scernfnl curl of lips that
once were kind and warm, we throw kiss
as you trip away. and do not feel afraid to
say that ten months hence. be there sun or
rain, you'll come smiling back again.
And there will be folks glad enough to
see you and ready, too, with praises of your
charms; and. leading the procession of
your most faithful admirers. will be the
coal dealer and the stove and furnace man.
This brings US, in roundabout way, to
the subject of house-warming, and leads
us to say that every home, be it ever SO
humble, should have its cheerful open
wood fire when the autumn nights grow
chill. What if two-thirds the heat does go
up the chimney? More people are made ill
by rooms overheated than by rooms too
cold. and there never was SO cheerful or
healthful fire as the blazing logs on the
hearth.
After long trial of stoves, heaters.
furnaces and other contrivances, folks have
reached The conclusion that their grand
fathers had really good thing in the way
Of honse-heating contrivance, and almost
every modern home has its open fire places,
places in which, during the whole
of autumn, the cheerful blaze will keep
our living-rooms healthful and comfortable,
and thus postpone the firing of the diabo-
licaI coal-annihilaiing and gas-belching
furnace.
Next to the hot-air furnace the "air-tight"
coal-stoye is the most discomforting and
unhealthful means Of heating house. 1t
may not consume as much fuel as some
other heating contriyances, but that is all
that can be said in its favor Its heat is
dry and enervating. it is always too hot or
else not hot enough, and it has a way of
filling the house with coal gas from the
first floor to the garret.
The hot-air furnace in the cellar is sug-
gestive of the diabolical regions. 1t covers
the furniture with ashes and saturates the
inmates of the house with gas and cellar
. odors. In moderate weather it will do its
best TO roast you, but when blizzard
comes down from the north, that depraved
ard A. x,;ohad g., ,.,;rl ,,t4o
refuse to heat any part of the house save
the cellar. In its better moods, even, it
fills the rooms with dry, slowly poison
GUS, cooked atmosphere, while it would
ruin the temper of saint to keep it run
ning,and bankrupt Cresus to feed it with
coal.
For that part of the year requiring a
regular and considerable amount of heat,
the steam and hot-water heaters are the
only satisfactory contrivances yet devised.
The latter is the most expensive to put in,
but the most economical to run, but the
former is very nearly as good in almost
every way.
But, whatever other means of house
heating be used, there should be place for
an open fire in the living room of every
house. The very cheerfulness it brings to a
room should make it worth much more than
the small outlay 1t adds to 1.-THE cost of q
house, to say nothing of its greatconyenience
and economy in fall and spring, when only
little fire is needed, to take off the chill,
as the saying goes.
The severe colds which prevail during
the fall, about the time that fires are start
ed, are no doubt due in large measure to
the everlasting of houses by furnaces and
stoves and the inhalation of coal gas, to
which the lungs are not yet accustomed.
In this mild climate Of ours, in which
summer weather fingers late, the open fire
on the hearth would keep the living
rooms comfortably warm until well into
December and again in April and early
May, thus shortening the service of the
coal-consuming furnace to little more than
three months and resulting not only in q
greater degree of comfort, but in a consider
able saving of expense.
Then let us have in our living rooms
the fireplace of our grandfathers. but mod.
eled on a smaller plan, where, with books
and papers and magazines, the family may
gather about the cheerful blaze when the
storm cries without and the autumn rain
beats against the panes, for, verify, when
the summer goes and the flowers die, home
is not home without its open fire.