own in the
diagram, of stones of any size from pebbles to flagstones, with the
surfaces levelled by sinking the under-part down into the clay until a
uniform level is reached on top. The fireplace may be built with bricks of
moist clay and wet clay used for mortar. Make the clay walls of the
fireplace at least one foot thick and pack it down hard and tight as you
build it. If you choose you may make a temporary inside wall of plank as
they do when they make cement walls, and then between the temporary board
wall and the logs put in your moist clay and ram it down hard until the
top of the fireplace is reached, after which the boards may be removed and
the inside of the fireplace smoothed off by wiping it with a wet cloth.

Stick Chimney

After the walls of logs and clay are built to top of the fireplace proper,
split some sticks and make them about one inch wide by one and one half
inch thick, or use the round sticks in the form in which they grow, but
peel off the bark to render them less combustible; then lay them up as
shown by Fig. 261, log-cabin style. With the chimney we have four sides to
the wall in place of three sides as in the fireplace. The logs of the
fireplace, where they run next to the cabin, may have to be chinked up so
as to keep them level, but the chimney should be built level as it has
four sides to balance it. Leave a space between the chimney and the
outside wall and plaster the sticks thickly with clay upon the outside and
much thicker with clay upon the inside, as shown by Fig. 271 _A_, which is
supposed to be a section of the chimney.

Fig. 269. Fig. 270. Fig. 271. Fig. 271A. Fig. 272. Fig. 273.

[Illustration: Detail for fireplaces and flues.]

Durability

All through the mountains of East Tennessee and Kentucky I have seen these
stick chimneys, some of them many, many years old. In these mountain
countries the fireplaces are lined with stones, but in Illinois, in the
olden times, stones were scarce and mud was plenty and the fireplaces were
made like those just described and illustrated by Fig. 272.

The stone chimney is an advance and improvement upon the log chimney, but
I doubt if it requires any more skill to build.

Chimney Foundation

Dig your foundation for your fireplace and chimney at least three feet
deep; then fill the hole up with small cobblestones or broken bluestone
until you have reached nearly the level of the ground; upon this you can
begin to lay your hearth