COUNTRY GENTLEMAN’S COMPANION. 
April 10. 
29 
In an evil hour this step was taken, and it has never been 
repented of, but once. From that day, poor Day’s peace, 
quiet, and staff of bread, have but glimmered and gone out. 
While the son was subservient to the father, all was in its , 
right place and no mischief suspected; but when the i 
tables were turned, when the son was the payer, and the ( 
father the payee, the young man’s character was discovered, | 
and the poor old man saw his error and misfortune when it 
was, alas ! too late. 
The discomfort of living in another person’s house, among 
a heap of young children, and looked upon as a trouble and 
incumbrance, is great enough in itself; but poor Day has i 
yet this increased trial to struggle against, that he cannot 
get his weekly pittance from his son. Sometimes he gets 
two shillings, and sometimes three, and sometimes nothing 
at all. He cannot help himself; he has placed himself in 
his son’s power, and there he must now abide. Liberty is 
sweet, or else the Union might be called a deliverance from 
such a thraldom. Day used to rent a piece of allotment 
ground, and there he is still constantly to be seen ; but ho 
is tilling it, poor man, for his son, who pays the rent and 
owns the produce. It is, no doubt, a comfort to get away 
from the house, to the fresh air, musical sounds, and un¬ 
disturbed peace of the allotments, and to occupy his once 
busy hands with lighter work; but he is old and feeble, and 
nearly starved at times, and has been principally, supported 
through this winter by the kindness of a lady in the village, 
who has done by him that which his own child ought to 
have done. 
There is a God who neither slumberest nor sleepest. 
There is a Father who pitietli His people, and whose Son 
was given to bind up broken hearts, and let the oppressed 
go free. In the multitude of poor Day’s sorrows, comfort 
refreshes his heart, even the comfort that God alono can 
bestow. He has been awakened to feel himself a lost 
sinner, and to seek Him, who “ came to seek and to save 
them that were lost.” 
During an illness which he has lately had, he opened a 
little book, the “ Companion to the Altar,” and it pleased 
our Heavenly Father to make that the instrument of 
arousing his heart, and alai’ming his conscience. He has 
been always a quiet man, as good, or better than his neigh¬ 
bours ; but he finds, now, that that will not fit him for 
eternity He sees he is not prepared to stand before the 
judgment-seat of Christ as he is, and he is hungering and 
thirsting after salvation. The tears of genuine sorrow— 
repentance not to be repented of—run down his furrowed 
cheeks, and the meekness of a little child is seen in his 
desire to gain light and knowledge. The meat thatperisheth 
he has little of; but labour to acquire that “which endureth 
unto everlasting life,” is never labour lost, and will fill the 
spiritual garner with overflowing treasure. How this blessed 
possession will sweeten his bitter days! The very struggles 
and strivings of an awakened spirit seem to deaden us to 
all secondary things; they leave the mind no time to trouble 
itself about worthless things of time ! How much more ab¬ 
sorbing and all-sufficient is the joy when perfect peace 
enters, and swallows up the trifles that used to vex and 
distract so much ! The peace poor Day is wrestling and 
struggling for, will be better to him than the best of sons 
and daughters. The Lord is a satisfying portion, and “ no 
good thing ” will he withhold from those that love and trust 
Him. How mercifully does our pitying Father provide for 
us in our difficulties and extremities! even under those 
which we have brought upon ourselves! How tenderly 
does He drop into a bitter cup the sweetening essence, that 
makes the loathsome draught almost delightful. Can He 
give a breaking heart a sweeter portion than Himself? 
Reader! take warning, and take comfort by John Day’s 
experience. Let parents never give up their rights, intrusted 
to them by the Lord; let them never place themselves in 
subjection to those whom they should govern. And let all 
men remember, Who it is, that can soften and sweeten the 
hardest and bitterest lot. 
MESSRS. JOHN WEEKS’S PRINCIPLE OF 
HEATING BY HOT-WATER. 
In answer to your correspondent, “ W. X. W.,” of the 
13th instant, we beg to state we are quite prepared to enter 
into any contract, either with Sir William Hooker, or the 
Government, to heat the Kew Palm House, or any other 
building, public or private. And we will guarantee that our 
boiler shall effectually heat any range of hothouses 1000 
feet long, or say buildings of any shape or description equal 
to hothouses 1000 feet long, which have, or require, 5000 
feet of four-inch pipe, and where the temperature is required 
to be maintained at 05° or 70°, at a cost of 3s. 8d. per day, 
for fuel and labour. And we further declare, that the whole 
of our several statements which have appeared in our ad¬ 
vertisements, as Avell as in our controversy with Sir William 
Hooker, are strictly true, and we might have said much 
more in favour of our boiler. 
We have one boiler heating the whole of our Nursery, 
consisting of hothouses, greenhouses, conservatories, Ac. 
Many of the houses are of wide and lofty dimensions, are 
of various sizes, and, together, equal to 1000 feet in length. 
Throughout the whole of the late severe winter it has not 
cost us more than 3s. fid. per day for fuel and labour, and 
we have always had a command of greater heat than we 
required ; and we could, had we thought proper, have main¬ 
tained during the most severe period of the season a tem¬ 
perature of 80 u in the stoves, and 00° in the greenhouses. 
This high temperature, of course, we did not require, and 
therefore, the boiler was never worked to much above half 
its full power; and we admitted air in all the houses both 
day and night. Our Nursery, although laid out with great 
regularity, consists of various detached houses, so that a 
great portion of the pipes are lost in drains which conduct 
them from one house to another. The actual area which 
our houses cover is 13,480 feet superficial; and if we sup¬ 
pose one large house the same as the Kew Palm House, 
where the whole of the pipes would be made available, we 
could, in such a case, heat nearly or quite double the area 
of our houses. 
Scientific men will understand that houses or bodies of 
any description are cooled by their sides being exposed to 
the atmosphere, and the more houses are detached, the 
more surface presented itself to the influence of the external 
temperature. And if on this principle we take the outside 
measurement of our detached houses, and compare them 
with the Kew Palm House, it will be found our detached 
houses measure about twice as much. If we were to use 
the same inferior boilers to warm our various houses to the 
temperature we require, it is probable we should consume 
the same enormous quantity of fuel they do for heating the 
Kew Palm House, namely—seventy-two sacks per day ; 
whereas, now with one boiler, we only consume three sacks 
of coke per day. 
It may be asked—“ How is it possible that one boiler can 
be so superior to another ? ” The facts are simple. Water 
becomes heated either rapidly or slowly, according to the 
surface of boiler exposed to the action of the fire. The 
boilers used at Kew have only a heating surface exposed to 
the fire of thirty superficial feet. Our boilers, although very 
little larger externally, expose a heating surface of 340 feet 
superficial to the immediate action of the fire; therefore, 
one of our boilers is equal to eleven of the boilers now in 
use at the Kew Palm House. 
In conclusion, we would observe, that we are not at all 
surprised that many of your readers, including “ W. X. W.,” 
should be “ astonished at the very contradictory statements 
which appeared in The Cottage Gardener, and other 
papers, from Sir William Hooker and the Messrs. Weeks,” 
relative to the consumption of fuel to heat the Kew Palm 
House ; but as Sir William has chosen to observe a strict 
silence on the subject, since our reply to his first statement, 
neither your readers nor ourselves have any other alternative 
but to fall back on our own judgment; and as practical men 
of some thirty-six years experience, we have no doubt what¬ 
ever that it is perfectly impossible to work the twelve boilers 
now in use at the Kew Palm House, and maintain a tem¬ 
perature of fi0° for anything like T300 a year; aud that, 
therefore, some great mistake must have been made by those 
who gave in such a report of the expenditure of fuel there 
to Sir William J. Hooker.— John Weeks & Co., King’s 
Road, Chelsea. 
