antidote to melancholy,
and other selfish, spiritual ills.

The truth in regard to their healthfulness is simply that they compel
us to sacrifice a large amount of fuel to the goddess of ventilation,
far more than would be needed to give us a better state of the
atmosphere, if applied in some other way; for the fire itself is
hungry for oxygen, fireplaces for wood are mightily prone to smoke,
and anthracite coal releases its poisonous gases at times so rapidly
that none but the most voracious chimney will carry them safely away.
To answer your questions directly: with a good stove in the hall and
in each of the rooms not commonly used, you would probably afford one
or two open fires for those constantly occupied, and keep comfortable
with less outlay for fuel than with a furnace. But you would need an
accommodating fool to make your fires, and an industrious philosopher
to keep them burning. In this matter of warming and ventilating the
more you know the more you will wish to learn. My hope is to set you
thinking and studying. Read Dr. George Derby's little book on
Anthracite and Health, from which I have drawn already for your
benefit; read the statistics of the increase of pulmonary diseases;
get the physiological importance of fresh air so clearly before your
mind's eye that your dinner seems a secondary consideration, and don't
be deceived by any bigoted commentators, or forget to use your own
common-sense.

While warming our backs we may dispose of some adjacent matters. You
can make a very pretty fireplace for wood of the common buff-colored
fire-bricks, either alone or variegated with good common red bricks; a
hearth of encaustic tile, pressed bricks, or even Portland cement. Let
the hearth be a generous one, two and a half feet wide, and at least
two feet longer than the width of the fireplace, if you mean it for
actual use. You must not suppose I object to cheap things because
they are cheap and therefore common. The more so the better if they
have real merit; but the marbleized slate mantels so abundant have not
enough intrinsic beauty to justify them in supplanting the more honest
and unpretending ones of wood. Real marble ought to be too expensive
for such houses as yours.

[Illustration: BRICK FIREPLACE.]

With a furnace your house becomes a lumber-kiln, and any wood that has
not been tried as by fire will, under its influence, warp and crack
and shrink; in carpenters' phrase, "it tears the finish all