ngerous. Theirs all open like doors, so that you have four doors to
each window, and until you get used to them you find they make a
pretty clatter whenever you set them wide. But in winter they are only
opened for a few minutes every morning when the room is "aired." It is
considered extravagant to open them at other times, because the heat
would escape and more fuel would be required. I suppose everyone in
England understands that our open fireplaces are almost unknown in
Germany. They have enclosed stoves of iron or porcelain that make
little work or dirt and give no pleasure. There is no gathering round
the hearth. You sit about the room as you would in summer, for it is
evenly heated. All the beauty and poetry of fire are wanting; you have
nothing but an atmosphere that will be comfortable or asphyxiating,
according to the taste of your hosts. Years ago in South Germany you
burnt nothing but logs of wood in the old-fashioned iron stoves, and
there was some faint pleasure in listening to their crackle. You could
just see the flames too, if you stooped low enough and opened the
little stove door. But the wood burnt so quickly that it was most
difficult to keep a big room warm. Nowadays you always find the
porcelain stove that Mark Twain says looks like the family monument.
In some of these coal is burnt, or a mixture of coal and peat. Some
burn anthracite, and are considered economical. A _Fuellofen_ of this
kind is kept burning night and day during the worst of the winter. It
requires attention two or three times in twenty-four hours; it is
easily regulated, and if the communicating doors are left open it
warms two or three rooms. A friend who has a large flat in Berlin told
me that there was one of these stoves in her husband's study, and that
her drawing-room which opens out of it, and which they constantly use,
had only had a fire in it five times last winter. I find on looking
at this friend's budget that she spends L16 a year on turf and other
fuel, and this seems high for a flat where so few fires were lighted.
But fuel is dear in German towns. Briquettes are largely used in
cities, small slabs of condensed coal that cost one pfennig each. It
takes about twenty-four slabs to keep a stove in during the day. The
great advantage of the _Fuellofen_ over the ordinary stove is that it
keeps in all night. There are dangerous variations of temperature in a
German flat that is kept as hot as an oven all day, and allowed