on the face of things, that
everybody there was to do just as he or she pleased. There were my books
and my writing-table spread out with all its miscellaneous confusion of
papers on one side of the fireplace, and there were my wife's great,
ample sofa and work-table on the other; there I wrote my articles for
the "North American," and there she turned and ripped and altered her
dresses, and there lay crochet and knitting and embroidery side by side
with a weekly basket of family-mending, and in neighborly contiguity
with the last book of the season, which my wife turned over as she took
her after-dinner lounge on the sofa. And in the bow-window were canaries
always singing, and a great stand of plants always fresh and blooming,
and ivy which grew and clambered and twined about the pictures. Best of
all, there was in our parlor that household altar, the blazing
wood-fire, whose wholesome, hearty crackle is the truest household
inspiration. I quite agree with one celebrated American author who holds
that an open fireplace is an altar of patriotism. Would our
Revolutionary fathers have gone barefooted and bleeding over snows to
defend air-tight stoves and cooking-ranges? I trow not. It was the
memory of the great open kitchen-fire, with its back-log and fore-stick
of cord-wood, its roaring, hilarious voice of invitation, its dancing
tongues of flame, that called to them through the snows of that dreadful
winter to keep up their courage, that made their hearts warm and bright
with a thousand reflected memories. Our neighbors said that it was
delightful to sit by our fire,--but then, for their part, they could not
afford it, wood was so ruinously dear, and all that. Most of these
people could not, for the simple reason that they felt compelled, in
order to maintain the family-dignity, to keep up a parlor with great
pomp and circumstance of upholstery, where they sat only on
dress-occasions, and of course the wood-fire was out of the question.

When children began to make their appearance in our establishment, my
wife, like a well-conducted housekeeper, had the best of
nursery-arrangements,--a room all warmed, lighted, and ventilated, and
abounding in every proper resource of amusement to the rising race; but
it was astonishing to see how, notwithstanding this, the centripetal
attraction drew every pair of little pattering feet to our parlor.

"My dear, why don't you take your blocks up-stairs?"

"I want to be where oo ar