424 
THE STOVE-PIPES. 
stoves, and there was demand, of course, for all our 
ingenuity both as tinkers and chimney-sweeps. Of my 
company of nine, Hans had the good luck to be out on 
the hunt, and Brooks, Morton, Wilson, and Goodfellow 
were scurvy-ridden in their bunks. The other four 
and the commanding officer made up the detail of 
duty. First, we were to give the smoke-tubes of the 
stove a thorough cleansing, the first they have had 
for now seventeen months; next, to reduce our effete 
snow-melter to its elements of imperfect pipes and 
pans; and, last, to combine the practicable remains 
of the two into one efficient system for warming and 
melting. 
“Of these, the first has been executed most gal¬ 
lantly. ‘Glory enough for one day!’ The work with 
the scrapers on the heated pipes—for the accumula¬ 
tion inside of them was as hard as the iron itself till 
we melted it down—was decidedly unpleasant to our 
gentle senses; and we were glad when it had advanced 
far enough to authorize a resort to the good old- 
fashioned country custom of firing. But we had not 
calculated the quantity of the gases, combustible and 
incombustible, which this process was to evolve, with 
duly scientific reference to the size of their outlet. In 
a word, they were smothering us, and, in a fit of despe¬ 
ration, we threw open our apartment to the atmosphere 
outside. This made short work of the smoky flocculi; 
the dormitory decked itself on the instant with a frosty 
forest of feathers, and it now rejoices in a drapery as 
gray as a cygnet’s breast. 
