The Montgomery advertiser., 1905-02-19
WHEN REALLY COLD.
Ink FrOxe to Pens and Boys to Wet Lap-
 stones in the Good old Days.

Ink FrOze to Pens and Boys to Wet Lap-
 stones in the Good old Days.
 Boston Globe.
 The ancient art of keeping warm in clustering winter weather was crude, as practiced by the forefathers, or Judge Sewell would not have complain ed that he was slow in recording events in his dairy because his ink froze upon his pen. Nor would the colonial shoe makers have many times decided that 1t was too cold to make shoes, but just right to go hunting. The test of tenn perature was made by allowing an ap- prentice to sit on a wet lapstone. If he was frozen to it, the weather was consider too cold to work.
 Indeed, just how the people of the cold parts of the country got any com fort during the severe winter days Is not apparent to the eyes of today that have looked upon the ample and curi- ous heat producers of early times. A rare collection of these ancient fire places and andirons, stoves and other promoters of mercurial rises is pre- served today in the Essex Institute, in Salem. Mass, together with much in- teresting information thereon.
 One of these curios Is a flreback from the ancestral home of Colonel Timothy Pickering, Washingtons friend and Secretary of War. It is slate, and looks like q gravestone. It was carved with the Pickering family crest. It was placed in the back of the fireplace, so that the burning logs would not set fire to the house.
 These old-fashioned freplaces were huge affairs. Children could sit in their corners and watch the sparks chase each other toward the stars. The fireplaces and chimneys were first lined with mud, so that they would not burn, but later they were made of brick. It is common remark that in trying to get warm at such the faces of people were roasted from the heat, while their backs froze in the draughts from the cracks in the windows and doors.
 But the early forefathers were a hardy race, and endured the cold won derfully. The Puritans of Salem re- fused to heat their meeting houses, de- claring that warmth therein twas a snake of ye willy and wicked satan .' The sturdy Puritan sires and their sons kicked their heels together when the cold stopped the circulation of their blood, and the preachers often patient ly paused in their two hours discourses to wait for everybody to become warm and stop kicking.
 Women carried little footstoves to church. These were perforated tin boxes few inches square, in which hot embers from the family hearth were placed, and) the hot stove was then taken to meeting along with the Bible. Coal was known as early as 1887 in this country and it was called iron stone" But wood was far cheaper and more convenient, and was most used. Peat was also. utilized, as 1t could be obtained from many bogs.
 Stoves were introduced as early as 1852, and in that year the General Court of Massachusetts granted to John Clark 10 shillings for every family using his valuable invention, a stove. for a period of three years, and this grant was subsequently extended for the pe- riod of Clarks lifetime. the General Court being deeply grateful for the com fort derived from his invention.
 The first open front coal stoves were designed by Benjamin Franklin, and were cast by James Byres x Co., in Springfield Mass, in 17S7. Franklin probably got his idea from the German stoves used in Pennsylvania These had hot air drum which extended to the second story and warmed that part of the house, but the doors of many of them were outside the house, so that 1t was necessary to go outside to feed them with fuel Franklins invention markeu the beginning or stoves for burning coal and wood, which are in general use today.
 These early stoves were as great blessings to the forefathers as arc steam heaters today. Even the poets sung of their virtues, referring to them as stoves which autumn of winter |could make"
 But today the practical man wants summer of winter made, and the vari- ous simple devices of the forefathers- the tirebacks, andirons, open fireplaces and crude stoves-have been thrown
 into the junk heap or into the museum to make way for the modern hot air and steam heaters.