"DEAD TREES LOVE THE FIRE" 



1AM sorry for the man who cannot get 

 pleasure out of a wood fire. One of the 

 promising signs of the times, according to my 

 view, is the reappearance of the open hearth in 

 most of our modern country-houses. If the 

 aesthetic movement in house-building leaves us 

 no other memento of its passage than the big 

 open hearth and the andirons of our fore- 

 fathers, we can afford to be thankful, for its 

 sins are as nothing as compared to this bless- 

 ing. Twenty years ago, one could find all over 

 the country noble old houses in which the big 

 fireplace had been bricked up in order to sub- 

 stitute a grate for coal, or, what is worse, a 

 pipe-hole for a stove. With the better senti- 

 ment of the last few years, the fortunate people 

 who own such houses have had the bricks torn 

 down and the old andirons rescued from the 

 attic. At my own fireside I have a pair of 



