open fireplaces that, the gray patriarch should have deigned to warm
himself at an air-tight stove.

And I, likewise,--who have found a home in this ancient owl's-nest
since its former occupant took his heavenward flight,--I, to my
shame, have put up stoves in kitchen and parlor and chamber. Wander
where you will about the house, not a glimpse of the earth-born,
heaven-aspiring fiend of Etna,--him that sports in the thunder-
storm, the idol of the Ghebers, the devourer of cities, the forest-
rioter and prairie-sweeper, the future destroyer of our earth, the
old chimney-corner companion who mingled himself so sociably with
household joys and sorrows,--not a glimpse of this mighty and kindly
one will greet your eyes. He is now an invisible presence. There
is his iron cage. Touch it, and he scorches your fingers. He
delights to singe a garment or perpetrate any other little unworthy
mischief; for his temper is ruined by the ingratitude of mankind,
for whom he cherished such warmth of feeling, and to whom he taught
all their arts, even that of making his own prison-house. In his
fits of rage he puffs volumes of smoke and noisome gas through the
crevices of the door, and shakes the iron walls of his dungeon so as
to overthrow the ornamental urn upon its summit. We tremble lest he
should break forth amongst us. Much of his time is spent in sighs,
burdened with unutterable grief, and long drawn through the funnel.
He amuses himself, too, with repeating all the whispers, the moans,
and the louder utterances or tempestuous howls of the wind; so that
the stove becomes a microcosm of the aerial world. Occasionally
there are strange combinations of sounds,--voices talking almost
articulately within the hollow chest of iron,--insomuch that fancy
beguiles me with the idea that my firewood must have grown in that
infernal forest of lamentable trees which breathed their complaints