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Page 25
Dropping on his knees in front of the fictitious fireplace, Jack pulled
the paper from the wall, disclosing a sheet-iron stove-pipe receiver,
set there for a time of need, and communicating in some mysterious way
with a sooty smoke flue. Having found this, he telephoned to the stove
store for a portable grate--that is to say, a Franklin stove with
ornamental tiles in the face of it--and in less than an hour the room
was radiant with the blaze of a hickory fire, while a hitherto unknown
warmth came to the lifeless marble from its new neighbor. By sitting
directly in front of it Jill discovered that in appearance the general
effect was nearly as good as that of a genuine fireplace, the warmth
diffused being decidedly greater.
"I'm sorry I lost my temper," said she, after they had sat a while in
silence enjoying the ameliorating influence of the blaze, "but I _do_
hate a humbug. We will let this stove stand here all summer to remind
you that neither your house nor your wife is perfect, and to keep me
warm when the east wind blows."
[Illustration: WARMTH UNDER THE WINDOW.]
Jack's response to this magnanimous remark must be omitted, as it had
no direct bearing upon house-building.
"When I went into the kitchen this morning to get warm," Jill observed
later in the evening, "I found Bridget ironing; the stove was red-hot,
the bath boiler was bubbling and shaking with the imprisoned steam, and
the outside door was wide open. It struck me that there was heat enough
going out of doors, not to mention the superheated air of the kitchen
itself, to have made the whole house comfortable such days as this, if
it could only be saved. Don't you think it would be possible to attach
a pipe to some part of the cooking-range that would carry steam or hot
water to the front of the house. We shouldn't want it when the furnace
was running, nor in very warm weather, and at such times it could be
turned off."
Jack thought it could be done, and expressed a willingness to be a
roasted martyr occasionally if he could by that means make some use of
the perennial fire in the kitchen, a fire that seemed to be the hottest
when there was no demand for it.
[Illustration: STEAM PIPES BESIDE THE FIREPLACE.]
"It's my conviction," said he, "that if the heat actually evolved from
the fuel consumed by the average cook could be conserved on strictly
scientific principles, it would warm the house comfortably the year
round without any damage to the cooking, and with a saving of all the
bother of stoves, fireplaces and furnaces." And his conviction was well
founded, provided the house is not too large and the weather is not too
cold. "Shall we try it in the new house?"
"No, not unless somebody invents a new patent low-pressure,
automatic-cooking-range-warming-attachment before we are ready for it.
We shall have fireplaces in every room--real ones--and steam radiators
beside."
"What! in every room, those ugly, black, bronzy, oily, noisy, leaking,
sizzling, snapping steam radiators that are always in the way and keep
the air in the room so dry that everybody has catarrh, the doors won't
latch, and the furniture falls to pieces? You know how the old heirloom
mahogany chair collapsed under Madam Abigail at Mrs. Hunter's
party--went to pieces in a twinkling like the one-horse shay--and all
on account of the steam heat."
"Yes, I remember; it was a comical tragedy; and before we run any such
risks let us look over our advisory letters. Here's one from Uncle
Harry, who, as you know, is never without a hobby of some sort. Just at
present he is devoted to sanitary questions. To be well warmed,
ventilated and plumbed is the chief end of man. He begins by saying
that 'sun's heat is the only external warmth that is natural or
beneficial to human beings. When men have risen above the dark clouds
of sin and ignorance they will discover how to preserve the extra
warmth of the torrid zone and of the hot summers in our own latitudes
to be evenly diffused through colder climes and seasons. Next to sun's
heat is that which comes from visible combustion--the burning of wood
and coal. Such spontaneous, radiant, living warmth differs essentially
from that which we receive by contact with artificially-warmed
substances, somewhat as fruit that has been long gathered differs from
that taken directly from the vine.'"
"Isn't this getting sort of misty, what you might call 'transcendental
like'?"
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