Year: 1879




There are some things about city houses.
otherwise pleasant, that are so abominable
that the family wishes they had never come
home from the country, and the heater or
furnace is one of them. In most residences
in town it is the only source of warmth,
and as the sun goes down upon the family's
first day in town and an occasional cold
wave passes down the associated spinal
columns in the sitting room or parlor a SER
want is told to kindle just little blaze in
the furnace. The servant obeys orders
the more judicious members of the family
make some inconspicuous excuse to get
close to the hot air register, and within
few moments-well, the malignity, the in
genuity, the versatility in tormenting ways
Of which the inanimate North American
heater is capable dawns upon the family as
suddenly and unexpectedly as it did last
year, the year before that, and perhaps on
several previous occasions. In the first
place the heater smokes dreadfully-though
what business smoke has to intrude upon
the hot air chambers of furnace is some
thing which the family ''give up" as
promptly as if it were the question as to
how John Kelly's bolt is going to help
the democratic party on election day.
Perhaps some blasting has been done in
the neighborhood and the foundations of
the heater have settled away from the
smoke pipe, pater familias argues, and if
he lives in an uptown ward he probably is
right; then, however, there comes up coal
gas as we'll as smoke, and the coughing
about that hot air register is as bad as any
one ever heard in O country church on
foggy day. Then, one by one, there ascend
heavenward some odors that are not those
of coal gas or smoke and pater familias re-
marks that he will go around and give that
coal dealer piece of his mind, and mater
familias says it seems as if meat were burn
ing somewhere, while Tommy, the FAM
lily joy and terror, entirely forgets to
say that earlier in the day he dropped
through an aperture of the register dead
mouse that he had found somewhere and
finally tired Of Then the oldest daughter
is sure that she smells burning wool, and
insists that some ones clothing is afire. As
Ill the SWccpluBS VI tuc WluIer nave SeLtleQ
in the hot air pipes and then been shaken
down as the family trunks were taken out
and brought in, humping the floor each
time so that the whole house shook, the
lint has found its way to the red hot sur
face OF the furnace and is burning indus
triously. Then there is waited upward an
other odor. One of the children suggests
that it reminds him of chewing gum--which
is not at all unlikely, considering the habit
of little people to leave such property lying
about, to be swept into the first open re-
ceptacle that broom reaches. Finally
every one retires in very bad humor,
and very early next morning the
landlord or the plumber receives o curt
but Urgent note {; some men come and ham,
mer at the heater, particularly while the
elder daughter is practising upon the piano
or there is company in the parlor cold
evening or two ensues, while during the day
metallic reverboration excites sentiments
more warming than caloric ever is. Finally
that heater is in the condition which 1t
should have been before any one came to
town--if any one had only thought of it.