while between the huge "_back-log_" and "_fore-stick,_" the bright
flames dance merrily up the wide chimney. I have often heard people
fancy a wood fire as always snapping and sparkling in your face, or
green and smoky, chilling you with its very appearance, but those would
soon change their opinion if they saw a pile of yellow birch and rock
maple laid right "fore and aft" across the bright fire-dogs, the hearth
swept up, and the chips beneath fanned with the broom, they would then
see the union of light and heat in perfection. In one way it is
preferable to coals, that is, while making on the fire you might if you
chose wear white kid gloves without danger of soiling them. Another
comfort to the settler in the back woods is, that every stick you burn
makes one less on the land. Stoves, both for cooking and warming the
houses, have long been used in the United States, and are gradually
coming into common use in New Brunswick. In the cities they are
generally used, where fuel is expensive, as they require less fuel, and
give more heat than open "fire-places;" but the older inhabitants can
hardly be reconciled to them; they prefer the rude old hearth stone,
with its bright light, to the dark stove. I remember once spending the
evening at a house where the younger part of the family, to be
fashionable, had got a new stove placed in the fire-place of "_'tother
room_," which means, what in Scotland is termed "_ben_" the house, and
in England "the _parlour_." This was the first evening of its being put
in operation. I observed the old gentleman (a first-rate specimen of a
blue nose) looked very uncomfortable and fidgetty. For a time he sat
twirling his thumbs in silence, when suddenly a thought seemed to strike
him: he left the room, and shortly after the draught-hole of the stove
grew dark, and a cloud of smoke burst forth from it. The old gentleman
came in, declaring he was almost suffocated, and that it was "all owing
to _that nasty ugly Yankee critter_," the stove. He instantly had it
taken down, and was soon gazing most comfortably on a glorious pile of