320 Economy of Fuel. 
’ that too on every floor from the cellar to the garret, will be wholly 
excluded. This expenditure for land on which to build chimnies, 
is no mean item in the first expense, and is anterior to the building, 
as well as to the maintaining of a chimney. Even admitting that 
one-thirtieth only of the ground were thus uselessly encumbered by 
the stacks of chimney, the aggregate loss on the original investment — 
would still amount to no mean sum for the population of a large 
city. The cost or rent of ground, on which to build chimnies, is 
therefore, the first object to be economized. The next item in thi 
expenditure is the construction of chimnies and fire-places, including 
the materials and the various furniture, either for use or for decora- 
tion,—the bricks, the marble, the brass and the iron; the fenders, 
the hearths and hearth-rugs, the mantles and their ornaments, elegant 
or tawdry ; and the glasses; that have been invented in all possible 
variety for no other conceivable purpose but to hide the deformity in 
But we have not yet done with the taxation to which the inhabi- 
tants of large cities submit for the purpose of warming the air above 
their chimney tops. ‘There comes an incessant call for kindling ma- 
terials, for wood, for bark, “chips,” charcoal, or the rather less evané- 
scent, but far more fumitory cannel coal. ‘There is the labor of one 
or more domestics almost constantly kept in requisition to build or to 
renew fires, to watch for falling brands and wipe from tarnished fur- 
niture the clouds of ashes, dust, and smoke. There is not seldom 
found the noise of shovels, and tongs, the distressful, asthmatic, Tes- 
‘piration of the bellows; the far spreading odor of a scorched heart! 
rug; the soon frayed and tattered carpet, cut though by fragments of 
combustible, crushed beneath the fect, and worn threadbare by the 
incessant application of the broom. ce 
But if the present mode of heating apartments is a grievous tax 
upon the purse, how much more upon the person? How many of 
the long catalogue of diseases, incident to our citizens, may be tra- 
ced to the unequal and ever variable temperatures to which the moc? — 
of heating houses now exposes them? Even admitting that @ pee 
form temperature has been obtained in the room chiefly occupied by 
the family, yet we seldom find the same heat prevalent throughout the 
house. The entries, staircases and other passages are in the cole 
weather exposed to frequent currents, of an icy chillness, even while 
the parlour suffers the torrid influences of a roaring fire. The cur 
rent up the chimney created by the latter only serves indeed to in- 
