“Fond memory brings the light of other days around me.”—Anonymous.
“Close up his eyes and draw the curtain close.”—Shakespeare.
“Fare thee well! and if forever, still forever fare thee well.”—Byron.
Hard coal and dry wood as good fuel may pass,
But can’t hold a candle to natural gas.—Original.
“Half light, half shadow, let my spirit sleep.”—Tennyson.
“Side by side may we stand at the same little door when all’s done.”—Owen Meredith.
Natural-gas, the cleanest, slickest, handiest fuel that ever warmed a heart or a tenement, is the right bower of crude-petroleum. It is the one and only fuel that mines, transports and feeds itself, without digging every spoonful, screening lumps, carting, freighting and shoveling into the stove or furnace. Getting it does not imperil the limbs and lives of poor miners—the most overworked and underpaid class in Pennsylvania—in the damp and darkness of death-traps hundreds of feet beneath the surface of the ground. You drill a hole to the vital spot, lay a pipe from the well to the home or factory, turn a stop-cock to let out the vapor, touch off a match and there it is—the brightest, cleanest, steadiest, hottest fire on earth. Not a speck of dust, not an atom of smoke, not a particle of cinder, not a taint of sulphur, not a bit of ashes vexes your soul or tries your temper. There is no carrying of coal, no dumping of choked grates, no waiting for kindling to catch or green wood to burn, no scolding about sulky fires, no postponement of heat because the wind blows in the wrong direction. Blue Monday is robbed of all its terrors, the labor of housekeeping is lightened and husbands no longer object to starting the fire on cold mornings. A nice blaze may be let burn all night in winter and kept on tap in summer only when needed. It is lighted or extinguished as readily as the gas-jet in the parlor. It melts iron, fuses glass, illumines mills and streets, broils steaks to perfection and does away with many a fruitful source of family-broils. It saves wear and tear of muscle and disposition, lessens the production of domestic quarrels, adds to the pleasure and satisfaction of living and carries the spring-time of existence into the autumn of old age. Set in a dainty metal frame, with background of asbestos and mantel above, its glow is cheerful as the hickory-fire in the hearth. It gives us the ingle-nook modernized and improved, the chimney-corner brought down to date. It glides through eighty-thousand miles of pipes in Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia, Indiana and New York and employs a hundred-million dollars to supply it to people within reach of the bounteous reservoirs the kindly earth has treasured all through the centuries. If it be not a blessing to humanity, the fault lies with the folks and not with the stuff. The man who spouts gas is a nuisance, but the well that spouts gas is something to prize, to utilize and be thankful for. Visitors to the oil-region or towns near enough to enjoy the luxury, beholding the beauty and adaptability of natural-gas, may be pardoned for breaking the tenth commandment and coveting the fuel that is Nature’s legal-tender for the comfort and convenience of mankind.