The daily morning journal and courier., 1897-04-13
THE ART OF KEEPING WARM.

to spend a perfectly comfortable winter | and never know what 1t Is to be cold, or wish for the happy days of spring, | come here to Russia, Of course there are plenty of places in our own blessed and enlightened land where everybody knows how to make winter pleasant season, but in Europe have found not a single country where winter is what we would call endurable-much less pleasant. The days are generally damp and raw and often quite cold, but still the inhabitants seem to live in the fond delusion that nature will keep them warm and comfortable, and furthermore, that it is entirely unne- cessary for them to assist nature in this matter.
 But in Russia all is different. There they expect to be cold, they know it will be cold, and the people make a special ty of keeping warm. And like most specialists, they come much nearer at taining perfection than do ordinary mortals.
 So If you want to be warm anywhere in Europe during the winter keep away from England with it's fogs and rain. Don't go to Italy, where there are only few stoves in the whole kingdom. Germany avoid as you would the plague; there you can never get much above freezing point. But go to Russia if you love warmth and comfort indoors and without, bright days and sunshine and dry, brazing air and cheerful bright-facod people. That's the place to be really comfortable and to enjoy winter and everything pertaining to it, there where the thermometer is from zero to forty below, where the snow, as dry and hard as sand, crunches under your feet with pleasant, crisp sound; where your breath makes little cloud before you and sometimes little lcicles on the edge of the great fur collar that reaches to the top of your head.
 In the first place, the houses are built for winter. The doors are double, the windows are double, and the walls are yard thick. Some time about the lat ter part of October the windows are all closed for the winter, and thoroughly sealed in every crack with putty But in every room there is one tiny pane, on l hinges, in both inside and outside win dows. Every morning for about ten minutes these panes are opened The rest of the ventilation is secured by two little openings into the room-one in the floor, in the corner, the other in the ceiling in the opposite corner. In this way fresh air comes from some where, and bad air goes somewhere else, and the result is that the atmos- l phere of the rooms is usually good l The heating of these houses is a fine art. It was a great surprise to mo at first when discovered that the only l fuel used in Russia is wood. To my American mind wood fire meant a great, glowing, sparkling, beautiful fire, with logs piled high and flames leaping up wide, black throated chimney. a poetic and romantic sort of fire, but rather inadequate when the thermometer is below zero when your back will freeze even while you sit on the very hearth with your feet inside of the fender. Such was my idea of a wood fire, and to hear that all Russia was kept warm during the long deadly Icold winters solely by wood fires was necessarily somewhat of a shock to me. IT have since learned that there are other ways of having wood fires besides our wasteful American way-not so beautiful perhaps, and net at all pie lturesque or romantic, but certainly useful. For, with as much wood as a
 
 load, a large room in Russia Is kept at a temperature of seventy or seventy five degrees for twenty-four hours. On unusually cold days they have two "heatings," but In ordinary weather, that is, with the thermometer around zero, one heating day is enough.
 A 'heating" is a very mysterious pro- cess. I don't understand 1t at all. I only tell it as 1t appears to me Tn each room there is stove, built gene rally of white porcelain tiles. It is three or four feet square and reaches nearly to the ceiling. Near the bottom is brass door, and near the top anoth- CT smaller one. There are also several little round brass caps that fit over cer- tain little holes in the side of the stove To me, however, the workings of these are as mysterious as Bill Yves parlor stove, the "fearfully and wonderfully made" in which to increase the heat you were to ''slide forward the camera and grease the aurora borealis" Tn the morning a man brings in an armful of wood-ten or a dozen sticks-opens the big brass door at the bottom and builds fire. Then he climbs up on a stepladder and opens the top door, and takes out thing that looks like stove lid from somewhere in the internal re- gions of the stove. The fire is allowed to roar and burn brisllly for half ar hour or so with full draught At the end of that time the stove lid is re- turned to it's retreat, the lower door is shut and screwed up almost air-tight and the heating" Is over Tn a short while the stove becomes so hot that fl twill keep the room as warm as YOU choose for twenty-four hours And il you know how to manage the brass caps, you can regulate your tempera. ture exactly according to your taste In the peasants houses the stoves are built of brick and plastered, but they are run on just the same principle a.
 those in the emperor's palace. And al