Stovepipe

“ A back-draught in the stovepipe would fill the room with poisonous gases and probably suffocate these wretches slowly and quietly. But how was it to be brought about? For a moment I thought of climbing to the roof and stopping the chimney from above. ”

“ He wore a pair of trousers as cylindrical in the leg as a stove-pipe; over them he wore a pair of cheap blue overalls, with the proper six-inch turn-up at the bottom to show the stovepipe trousers underneath. ”

“ After striving to cook food in front of one of the two fireplaces in that house, I was actually ashamed of having complained because our stove in the wagon on a stormy morning had seemed to me like some contrary animal.
However much trouble we might have had with wet fuel and lack of draft owing to the shortness of the stovepipe, [85] it was as nothing compared with those rude fireplaces, where our faces were burned almost to a crisp, our eyes filled with smoke, and whatever was cooking came from the heat thickly incrusted with ashes. ”

“ I claim 1st, the boiler, D, constructed with a depression in its rear side, in combination with a stove made with the extended top, A, and with a stovepipe, C, which is entirely independent of the boiler, but still is partly enclosed by the boiler, in the manner and for the purpose described. ”

“ The smoke and gases from the fire must not come out into the room to blind our eyes or suffocate us; the chimney is built to take care of the smoke and gases, and there must be a way for them to get into the chimney; the stove pipe is for this. But the game you have to play with your stove is to let the smoke and gases run up chimney, but to save all the heat you can for the work to be done. So your stove is supplied with dampers. When the fire is new, and there is much smoke or gas, you open the damper into the stovepipe, and in the stovepipe. ”

“ STOVES AND GRATES. Rooms heated by stoves should always have some opening for the admission of fresh air, or they will be injurious to health. The dryness of the air, which they occasion, should be remedied by placing a vessel filled with water on the stove, otherwise, the lungs or eyes will be injured. A large number of plants in a room prevents this dryness of the air. Where stove-pipes pass through fire-boards, the hole in the wood should be much larger than the pipe, so that there may be no danger of the wood taking fire. The unsightly opening thus occasioned should be covered with tin. ”

“ The Kitchen Stove. The chief business of the kitchen stove is to provide heat for cooking. It must hold a fire, and so must be made of something which will not burn. Stoves are usually made of iron. Fire will not burn without air, so a place must be arranged to let air into the stove, and just enough to make the fire burn clearly and furnish the right amount of heat. That is what the front dampers or slides are for. The fuel, wood or coal, is held in the fire-box. The heated air makes the top of the stove hot for frying, broiling or boiling, and the oven hot for baking. ”

“ The stove was close to the door, but of course, no one who lives in a caravan ever uses the stove except when it is raining. You make the fire out of doors at all other times, and swing the pot from three sticks. (Hedgehog stew! Can't you smell it?) There were kitchen utensils on hooks and racks on each side of the stove which was covered in with shining brass, and rows of enameled cups and saucers, and plates, and knives and forks. ”

“ But it was the stove that made this room unique: not an ordinary, commonplace cooking-machine, but a big, generous, roomy arrangement, pushed far back out of everybody’s way, with out-riggers for broiling, and capacious ovens for baking, and shelves for keeping things hot, besides big and little openings on top for pots and kettles and frying-pans, of a pattern unknown to the modern chef; each and every one dearly prized by the cheery little soul who burnt her face to a blazing red in its service. ”

“ In the winter, I am persuaded, I could not exist in rooms thus closed up, with stoves heated in their manner, for they only put wood into them twice a day; and, when the stove is thoroughly heated, they shut the flue, not admitting any air to renew its elasticity, even when the rooms are crowded with company. These stoves are made of earthenware, and often in a form that ornaments an apartment, which is never the case with the heavy iron ones I have seen elsewhere. Stoves may be economical, but I like a fire, a wood one, in preference ”

“ Around a stove-pipe, the motion of the heated air as it goes up is very manifest. Light things are often seen flying up in the current of the air about the pipe. Sometimes, for amusement, little paper wind-mills are fastened to a stove-pipe, the heated air whirling them around as it strikes them in going up. I have seen a very curious toy, in which a wood-sawyer is made to work by the whirling of a little paper wind-mill. Whenever there is a strong current of hot air, the wind-mill turns quite rapidly, and this sets the sawyer to working his paper saw most furiously. ”

“ In these pleasant wide stoups, the floors of which are generally very nicely boarded and painted, the women of the family sit to sew or knit in warm weather, the children play in them when the sun is too hot, or the weather too wet for them to go out of doors; and the men not unfrequently solace themselves with a pipe. At the back of the house, the stoup serves for larder, store-room, laundry, garden-house, and a vast many other purposes. I have seen joints of frozen meat hanging in the “back stoup” for weeks together, along with frozen fowls, dry salt-fish, and venison. ”

“ But if you cannot have a steam or hot water furnace, you can make a room very comfortable indeed with a stove, if you will but introduce all the fresh air required for the room directly against or on top of the stove. No stove ought to be put up without having a supply of fresh air from the outside, and a large evaporating vessel, kept constantly filled with water, with an opening in the heated flue near the floor for the escape of the foul air. ”

“ I had my own cushion, and there was a stove—it is the finest thing in the world at this season of the year. I used to go under the stove, and lie down quite beneath it. Ah, I still dream of that stove. Away, away!"
"Does a stove look beautiful?" asked the Snow Man, "is it at all like me?"
"It is just the reverse of you," said the dog; "it's as black as a crow, and has a long neck and a brass knob; it eats firewood, so that fire spurts out of its mouth. We should keep on one side, or under it, to be comfortable. ”

“ What should you say to a stove, which, summer or winter, night or day, in rain or sunshine, amid the ice of the pole, or under the sun of the equator, was able to keep itself constantly in the same condition; neither hotter nor colder one minute than another, whether you gave it much or little fuel, at a given moment, and sometimes when you gave it nothing for whole days together? It would be worthy of a fairy tale, would it not? Yet the human body is a stove of this description. ”

“ Her husband remembered the cooking-stove which had been the admiration of his childhood, and resolved, if a change must be made, to have one of that identical pattern in his own house.
"But your mother's stove, though a good one for those days," said Mrs. Wilson, "was one of the first invented, and destitute of most of the conveniences which now accompany them. It consumed, beside, double the amount of fuel required in one of the modern stoves."
"What an absurd idea! A stove is a stove. ”

“ There was no big, clumsy stove to be seen—for in the houses of the rich, in a recess in each room, is a kind of oven, in which a great wood fire is allowed to smoulder all day—but a delicious feeling of warmth prevailed, and a soft, sweet perfume floated on the air. ”

“ HOW TO PUT UP A STOVE-PIPE. PUTTING up stove-pipe is easy enough, if you only go at it right. In the morning, breakfast on some light, nutritious diet, and drink two cups of hot coffee; after which put on a suit of old clothes—or new ones, if you can get them on time—put on an old pair of buckskin gloves, and, when everything is ripe for the fatal blow, go and get a good hardware man who understands his business. If this rule be strictly adhered to, the gorgeous eighteen-karat-stem-winding profanity of the present day may be very largely diminished, and the world made better. ”

“ Nor is it sufficient to understand only one particular stove. The practical foreigner prides himself upon having various stoves, adapted to various work. Hitherto I have been speaking only of the stove supposed to be best suited to reception rooms and bedrooms. The hall is provided with another sort of stove altogether: an iron stove this, that turns up its nose at coke and potato-peelings. If you give it anything else but the best coal it explodes. It is like living surrounded by peppery old colonels, trying to pass a peaceful winter among these passionate stoves. ”

“ The good points of the stove are that it can be made by anybody in a half day's time; it does not smoke the camp, does not black the cooking utensils, gives the maximum amount of heat from the minimum quantity of fuel, and will not give out or go bad unexpectedly in the middle of the winter. If you leave it to me our camp will be equipped with a sheet iron stove. While the stove itself is not now to be considered, we must know before we commence to build what form of heating and cooking apparatus will be installed. ”

“ But open fireplaces, while pleasant to look at, are not efficient for either heating or cooking. The possibilities for the latter are especially limited, and the invention of stoves was a great advance in efficiency, economy, and comfort. A stove is a receptacle for fire, provided with a definite inlet for air and a definite outlet for smoke, and able to radiate into the room most of the heat produced from the fire which burns within. ”

“ As to your favourite, the stove, although I love it not so well as the old familiar fire-place, I can admire and value it as part of the spirit of improvement which is spreading o'er our land—her early troubles are passing away, and she is rising fast to take her place among the nations of the earth—bitter has been her struggle for existence, but the clouds are fading in the brightness of her coming years, and her past woes will be forgotten. ”

“ I paid four dollars for them. There is a small stove hole in the chimney on one side of my room; when I get to earning, I 'm going to have a little stove here and do my own cooking. Thank fortune, I can cook as well as chop wood if I have to! So far I 've heated my things on Mrs. T.'s stove. She lives, that is, cooks, eats, sleeps, and washes in her back basement; the front one she rents to a barber. He makes his living from the students round here and the professors at the Seminary. She says the students cook most of their meals in their rooms on their gas stoves. ”

“ Attention has already been drawn to the importance of thorough ventilation of the kitchens. A cooking stove is much to be preferred to a kitchen range or ordinary kitchener, and may be obtained of any size required, the prices ranging from about £5 upwards. The kitchen should contain either two ‘coppers’ or a gas stove with two boilers, one for boiling water, and the other for making soup. The latter is a convenient arrangement especially where tea and coffee are required at an early hour in the morning. ”

“ I had some good coals of apple-tree wood in the stove that morning, and I put them into the pan, and closed the stove door, and took the stove in my left hand under my cloak like a basket of eggs. Nobody ever carries a foot-stove now, though there can be found one still in the saddle-rooms and eaves-holes of nearly all the old houses, along with the brass warming-pans, candle-moulds, and shovels and tongs and fenders. ”

“ The stove can be inclosed by sliding doors shutting off the heat in warm weather. These kitchen stoves, and a large stove in the basement to warm the central hall, would suffice for all the rooms, except in the coldest months, when a small terra cotta stove, made for this purpose, or even an ordinary iron stove, placed by one window in each of the parlors, would give the additional heat needed; while fresh air could be admitted from the windows behind the stove, and thus be partially warmed. ”

“ Thirty-three years' experience has proved to me that stoves in any school are a nuisance: the common fire place is better than heating with hot air, hot water, or stoves of any description that I have yet seen. The grate being low, as at railway stations, is an improvement and answers well. Had theorists seen the white faced dull eyed children that I have seen, where stoves are used, and felt the head aches which I have felt, they would soon banish them from every school. ”

“ And even when the stove is constructed of pantiles or pottery-ware, if any part of it in contact with the air of the room is suffered to become very hot, which seldom fails to be the case in German stoves constructed on the common principles, nearly the same effects will be found to be produced on the air as when the stove is made of iron, as I have very frequently had occasion to observe. ”

“ A stove is a device for holding the fuel and for permitting the heat to pass readily into the room. In the stove there is space below the fire for collecting ashes. There is an opening for fresh air to enter below the fuel, to aid combustion, and a damper above to act as a check draft when open, a chimney to carry off smoke, and one or two dampers in the chimney to regulate the draft. ”