An Open Fire The Art of Home-Making 1898

We lost a great deal from our lives when in the march of modern improvements, many of us found that we could dispense with a fire on the hearth. A furnace in the cellar or steam pipes diffusing warmth through the house are certainly very comfortable arrangement for the Arctic cold of our American winters, and where one cannot have these for actual defense against the rigors of the severest January and February weather nothing surpasses a good old-fashioned stove.

But for cheer, for brightness, for making the home alive with sparkle and glow, nothing is equal to an open fire. It may be just a hand ful of pine knots, or a lump or two of soft coal, or, best of all, a bundle of fagots made of drift wood which has tossed about on the sea and been thrown on the shore, and which is full of all sorts of poetical associations and suggestions of storm and stress outside as it lends itself to comfort within.

Whatever it is, the open fire give the last touch of domesticity to a home. It is worth the little extra expense it costs to have its daily beauty and brightness, and not one who has ever been able to compass it will ever again do without its joy. In localities where wood is plenty and to be had for the trouble of getting, people may indulge themselves in rousing fires with a big black log, or a roaring blaze which goes joyously up the chimney and diffuses warmth through a large room.

That is for the dweller in the country .We of the town sometimes have to be satisfied with a mere imitation blaze in the shape of a gas log, and this is better than nothing, but best of all it the real thing itself. An open fire disposes one to pleasant low toned conversation, to telling stories in the firelight, to sitting with a child cuddled up in one’s arms, to retrospection, to all sorts of pleasant dreaming and musings.

Our life is so active, so filled with excitement, that we are much to little given in these days to quiet thought. Anything which tempts one to repose is a great boon. Indeed, there are very few of us who would not be the better for sitting down every day for a half hour, with folded hands, simply for the purpose of thinking, or of letting the mind lie fallow without much effort at consecutive meditation....

Lorraine Curry http://www.easyhomeschooling.net FREE ideas, tips and subscriptions!

-- Lorraine Curry (easyhs@cornhusker.net), August 06, 2001