Democratic Sentinel, Volume 9, Number 8, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 20 March 1885 — The Old-fashioned Fireplace. [ARTICLE]

The Old-fashioned Fireplace.

There is something about an oldfashioned fireplace that takes a body by the hand without waiting for an introduction. It don’t keep a man standing out in the hall till his nails turn blue, and he sighs a regret that he didn’t bring his ear-muffs along; but before he can tell how it is,done, it has made him feel right at home, and is communing with him like an old friend with whom he hopes never to part again. It puts him in the best chair and is on the way to the cellar for cider before he can get his hat off. And as he sits there rubbing his hands with an ecstatic sort of feeling to which no word in our language can give full expression, he feels like giving the bulk of his property to the poor before he has been there two minutes. It warms him up with a glow that makes him feel benevolent from his teeth to his toe-nails; quickens up his blood till he almost feels his hair grow, and takes away the fear of death, or gives a fascination to fire, which amounts to about the same thing. It matters nothing to him how cold it is outside; in fact, the coldea the better, for the more cheer it gives to the vault of flame before him, and at that moment it wouldn’t nmke him wince to know that every pipe in town was frozen “ip ever so much tighter than the times, unless he was a plumber; but, bless your soul, a plumber never gets "time to go near a fire, except to melt his solder, if he happens to get started on a job before cold weather sets in. The old-fashioned fireplace, with its wide jambs, to take in logs bigger than a half-grown boy; its high mantel, with a dish of apples on one end, a pitcher of cider on the other, and a panful of nuts in the middle, while a fire, like a dream of love, roars and crackles, and sputters and pops, just back of the glowing hearth, on which stands the dutch-oven throwing out the suggestion of a mince pie, that seems the very quintessence of toothsome cookery every time the lid is raised, to say nothing of the smell of joy to famine that comes from the mammoth caldron swinging on the crane, and just fairly begging of you to drop in some time when you are hungry. Is there anything in castiron that can throw out rapture like this? Will nickel-plated trimmings <L> it, or bring heaven down the chimney equal to it? Can a dark, bleak hole in the floor—no matter how it may try to scorch and smother you—crowd your home with sunshine cloudy day, and make you'feel as rich as a pork-paeker,when you may in reality be swamped in debt up to your- eyebrows ? Can a gridiron stack of steam E in one corner of the room fill your e with the joyous music of- childhood? Can it renew your youth and make sweet cider taste like gin a hundred years old ? Can it carry you back to the good old days when you could get a barrel of flour for $3, and wear your wedding suit thirty years for genteel use ? Can any of these things take the rheumatism out of a man’s legs, and make him feel like dancing a hornpipe even on Sunday ? Can they bring back his hair, restore failing eyesight, or put teeth in his mouth equal to any emergency? Can they quicken up his imagination, and make him tell yarns about the good old times when he shouldered a saw-log and made himself bow-legged for life, and other stories of similar import, that no one under forty will believe? Indeed they can not, and nothing short of an old-fash-ioned fireplace on a cold day can do it. —Chicago Ledger.