1/2 
HOUSE AND GARDEN 
March, 1914 
gray marble. 
Now, it seemed 
to me the draw¬ 
ing-room hearth 
was of just that 
peculiar marble, 
and I took the 
piece up for com- 
p a r i s o n. It 
proved quite the 
same, and, more- 
o v e r, it corre¬ 
sponded in width 
with the facing, 
at that time a 
plastered affair, 
with crude blue 
stenciled designs. 
Excited, I called 
D. How we ran¬ 
sacked that cel- 
1 a r! Several 
more pieces came 
to light, and some 
of them were of 
brownstone like 
the dining-room 
It was the most fascinating of cut-up puzzles! In the 
The white treatment of the hallway makes an effective 
foil for the dark furniture and mahogany banisters 
hearth. 
end we had the uprights of the dining-room facing entire and 
those of the drawing-room, with the exception of a fragment two 
inches long or so. What had become of the lintels puzzled us. 
A few days later D. called me to the kitchen. 
“What on earth is that flat thing they've put under the range?" 
she said. 
“Can't 
. ■>” 
With a table-leaf 
1 pried up the 
range an inch or 
so and pulled it 
out. and another 
like it. 
“T h e lintels !" 
we shouted. “Yah ! 
Hallelujah! We’ve 
found 'em !" 
We capered 
about, idiotically, 
enthusiastically! 
Black they were, 
b u t unbroke n. 
Ah! we knew the 
excited joy of the 
archaeologist who, 
d i g g i ng through 
buried cities, finds 
a strange inscrip¬ 
tion or a perfect 
has - relief ! What 
was the history of 
those facings? 
W ere they taken 
d o w n merely to 
serve as foot-stool 
for an apathetic kitchen range 
ancient aesthetics? Well, Art came into her own again, 
old facings are now where they belong. 
From beneath the kitchen stove were unearthed the 
marble slabs that once framed the fireplace opening 
It 
Repeating landscapes in various tones of gray were selected as the wall-paper pattern most consistent with 
the color scheme and most appropriate for the dining-room of an old house 
modern ingenuity victorious over 
and the 
As to the 
f o u n d a t i o n 1 e s s 
range, it devel¬ 
oped that a new 
floor had been 
laid, lapping over 
the old stone 
heart h, so we 
took it up and ex¬ 
posed the gray, 
flat stones. T h e 
wide fireplace 
had a curious set 
of wooden doors, 
doubtless closed 
when the fire was 
not lighted, to 
keep ashes from 
blowing into the 
room. The new 
floor held them 
shut, and when it 
was cut away we 
opened them. 
T here was the 
old fireplace just 
as it used to he; 
the great iron crane hanging in sockets let into the side wall, 
was so curiously interesting that we resolved some day to build 
another kitchen and turn that into a smoking-room. Meanwhile 
we use the great fireplace for ventilation. The doors were lifted 
from their hinges and the range set hack into the opening, which 
is so high that it acts as a hood to gather the cooking smells and 
draw them up the 
chimney. The iron 
stovepipe is carried 
to the top, and 
heats the air 
around it, causing 
a steady draught 
up and out from 
the kitchen. The 
new position of the 
range gives more 
room, too, and all 
without destroying 
the old work in the 
least. In fact, we 
could restore the 
mantel-shelf where 
it had been hacked 
away for the stove¬ 
pipe and plaster up 
the hole above 
where the pipe had 
entered the fine. 
Those early days 
o’ f housekeeping! 
H o w enthusias¬ 
tically we plunged 
into restoration and 
development! Lay¬ 
ers of paper were 
stripped from the walls, and we painted them or hung new paper 
more in keeping. D. was the motive force in all this. • My in¬ 
terests were rather out-doors, so when something appealed to her 
