XLVII.
THE OLD SITTING-ROOM STOVE.
What is there within the home, during the winter season at least, that seems so thoroughly to constitute the soul of home as the family-room stove? It can never be replaced by that ugly hole in the floor which floods our rooms with furnace heat, with no glow of cheerful firelight, no flicker of flame or changeful play of shadow out of which to weave fantastic dreams and fancies. I once watched the dying out of one of these fires in a great base burner, around which for years a large and loving family had gathered. The furniture of the home had all been sold, and the family was about to scatter. The trunks were packed and gone, the last article removed from the place, and the old stove was left to burn out its fire at the last, that it, too, might be removed next morning. And after the evening had come and was far spent, the last evening wherein any right should remain to us to enter the old home as its owners and occupants, I took my pass-key and slipped over from the neighbor's for my final good-bye to the dear old home. The fire-light, like the glance of a reproachful eye, shone upon me through the gloom of the deserted parlor. "Have I not warmed you and comforted you and cheered you with my genial glow?" a voice seemed to say; "and now you have come to see me die! I am the vital spirit of your home. I am dying, and nothing can ever reanimate these deserted rooms again with the dear, the beautiful past."
Like the eye of one who is going down to death, the firelight faded and finally went out in the pallor of ashes, while I, sitting alone in the darkness, felt the whole world drearier for a little space for the final extinguishment of this fire, the death hour of a once happy home.