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 the 

 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 

 question. 



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 evane- 

 scent, but far move 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, res- 

 piration of the bellows ; the far spreading odor of a scorched hearth 

 rug ; the soon frayed and tattered carpet, cut though by fragments of 

 combustible, crushed beneath the feet, and worn threadbare by the 

 incessant application of the broom. 



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 mode 

 of heating houses now exposes them ? Even admitting that a uni- 

 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 cold 

 weather exposed to frequent currents, of an icy chiilness, 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- 



