A Little Housekeeping Book for a Little Girl; Or, Margaret's Saturday Mornings

by Caroline French Benton

Margaret laughed at this, but her mother said stoves were just like people, and sometimes would refuse to do as they were told, and were cross and sulky; but they could be as pleasant and smiling and obliging as a good little girl. Then she took off the covers and explained all about the inside of the range. "You see," she began, "the fire is in a sort of box lined with heavy brick. Now, if the coals come up to the very top of this, or lie on its edges, they will crack the brick as they get heated, and so spoil it, and fire-brick is very expensive and troublesome to replace. You can heat the sides and bottom very hot, and it will not hurt it, but not the top edges. So, in putting on coal you must never let it quite fill the box, and after you set the scuttle down on the floor you must take the long poker and feel all around on top of the ovens and see if any bit has rolled there, and bring it back where it belongs. If it should roll down the sides you could not get it out, and it would spoil the draft and injure the stove. Now if you understand all this we will shake out the coal and make a new fire."

"Oh, let me shake!" exclaimed Margaret, and before her mother could stop her she had put in the shaker and moved it about so quickly that the ashes came out of the open covers and drafts and filled the room, and both she and her mother were coughing and choking.

Her mother stopped her. "That isn't the way to shake a fire," she said. "The covers must all go on first, and everything be shut up tight." Then she showed her the two slides over the oven doors, and the others in front, and pushed them shut. The two in the stovepipe were opened, so the ashes could go up that way, and the covers were tightly put in their places. "Now," she said, "you may shake."

So Margaret shook and shook until her arms were tired, but though the fine ashes all came out, there was a handful of large coals which would not go through the grate. These, her mother explained, were partly good, unburned coal, and partly poor, hard bits, called clinkers. Some people just turned them all out with the ashes and threw them away, but this was wasteful. They must be picked over and the good bits burned again. Margaret hunted up a big pair of old gloves of her father's, and with these on she picked out the good pieces of coal and laid them on one side, and then she tipped the grate by turning the stove handle quite around, and the clinkers all fell into the ash-pan and the grate was left empty. A big newspaper was next spread on the floor and the ash-pan carefully drawn out over it and emptied into a scuttle kept ready for this, so it could be easily carried to the place where the ashes were kept, and emptied into the can there. She put the empty pan on the paper, and with her brush swept out all the cracks inside the stove, up and down, here and there, till no ashes were to be seen anywhere. Then the pan was put back. The ovens were opened next, and these, too, swept out with a clean whisk-broom, and away back in the corners they found several bits of toast and such things all dried to a crisp, which Bridget had not seen at all. When all the ashes were taken up and those on the newspaper cleared away, her mother said, "Now we are ready for the fire."

"First we put a crumpled paper on the bottom; on this we lay crossed sticks of kindling, a good many, because this is to be a coal fire; if we were going to burn wood we would not need so many; we must shut the little slide in the front of the stove directly before the fire, and open the one at the bottom, so the smoke will go up. Look and see if the two drafts in the pipe are open; if not, the room will be full of smoke as soon as we start the kindling. The dampers into the ovens must be shut, too, so the fire will have nothing to distract its attention; if we left them open it would think it had not only to burn, but to get the ovens hot, too. Now if you are ready you can light the paper."

In a moment Margaret heard the wood roaring well, then she took off a cover and sprinkled on one shovel of coal and closed the top again; as soon as she saw by peeping in that this was red, she put on another, scattering it evenly all around, and presently she added a third shovelful, and by this time the wood was well burned away and the coal was hot, so she knew the fire was made.

The lesson then took up heating the ovens, which was still more important. Her mother showed Margaret how to push in and out the dampers over the oven doors, and explained the shutter inside which they worked. "When we want the oven hot we pull the shutter open to let the heat go all around the oven. When we want to cool it we shut the shutter. The first thing to learn about a stove is this: find out whether the damper is pushed in or pulled out to heat the ovens; you can tell by taking off the top covers and watching, for you can see in that way how the shutter works. Some push in and others pull out, and each stove may be different. These push in when you want to get the oven hot. Now, if you want to cook on top of the stove, and want all the heat up there, of course you do not need the ovens heated, so you shut them away. When you are all done with the fire never let it burn uselessly, but close it up, and so keep it. The reason of the draft in the front of the stove at the bottom, is this: the air rushes in up through the coal and on into the chimney, and makes the fire go hard. If you want to have it go slowly and not waste the coal, of course you must shut this tight. The other draft, directly in front of the fire, lets the cool air right in on the hot coals, and keeps them from burning up rapidly, so if you want a hot fire you must shut this, and when you want the fire to go down you must open it. Is that plain?"

"Yes," said Margaret, thoughtfully. "When I bake I make the ovens hot by pushing in the dampers, and opening the slide at the bottom and shutting it at the top. When I want to make something on top, I pull out the dampers to get the ovens cool, and I open the one at the bottom and shut the one at the top. When I'm all done I leave the oven dampers out, shut the bottom draft in front and open the top one. Then the fire gets cool. But what do I do to the chimney dampers?"

"Sure enough," said her mother, "we almost forgot those. You see the queer handles on them—thin and straight; those are like the flat plates inside the pipe that turn just as they do. When you want the fire to burn hard you turn the handle along the pipe, and that turns the plate the same way, and the heat can get out and make a good draft. But if you are shutting up the fire you turn the handle across the pipe, and that makes the plate turn straight across, too, and stops the heat from getting out, and so the fire dies down."

"Oh, yes," said Margaret, "that's easy to understand. But what do people do who don't have coal fires? Sometimes they have wood to burn."