House £sf Garden 
Gould, in his work on Germany, tells us 
that it is only necessary to light a fire in 
them once in twelve hours, and then only 
at the expenditure of a small bundle of logs. 
Often a few shavings or pine cones will suf¬ 
fice to keep a room warm for several hours. 
The receiver where the fuel is placed, being 
very large, constituting in fact the whole ot 
the lower structure, a quick, sharp fire will 
leave it a glowing mass. The damper at the 
top, opening into the chimney, being closed, 
the intense heat is preserved in the receiver, 
which radiates heat into the room for a con¬ 
siderable time. (See the diagram on page 
107.) In Germany, where coal and wood are 
scarce and necessarily expensive, and for 
that matter in America, too, at the present 
time, the reducing of this important item of 
expenditure, is a great boon. When one 
thinks of the tons of coal burned annually 
even in the small American houses, and the 
consequent overheating and deadening of 
the air, one realizes that apart from the 
artistic beauty of the porcelain stoves they 
could bring more wholesome comfort at a 
very little expenditure of money to the 
humblest household. To be sure, a large 
tile stove beautifully decorated, could not be 
purchased at a small cost, but divested of its 
ornamental features in the way of tile decora¬ 
tions, it could still easily be made a thing of 
beauty, for a plain tile of good color could 
be had at moderate cost, and good structural 
lines cost no more than clumsy ones. Much 
of the surface of the stove coidd be made 
to take the place of a mantel, and numerous 
shelves and niches added to make it orna¬ 
mental as well as useful. Properly placed, 
one stove might heat three rooms, so that 
for small houses of people of moderate 
means, from two to three stoves would make 
life comfortable. The fact that the work 
involved in making fires would be eliminated 
and the dust and dirt irom ashes removed, 
must also be considered two more virtues to 
be laid to the credit of the porcelain stoves. 
Were they introduced into the homes of 
wealth, where comfort and beauty only need 
be thought of, the artist’s fancy and ingenu¬ 
ity might have full scope, so great are the 
GERMAN STOVE DESIGNED BY AN ITALIAN 
IN SCHLOSS ACHLEITHEN 
109 
