Down in the cellar there was an enormous structure of cast iron, with twisted pipes sticking out of it in all directions as though it were some sort of mechanical octopus. And down in the very heart of it there were usually half a dozen coals smouldering away. That was its ordinary condition. But two or three afternoons a week a local financier, who had about thirty furnaces on his visiting list, used to call and pour a ton or so of coal down its throat. Then he opened wide all the drafts and went rejoicing on his way to the bank to deposit his latest dividend.
About midnight on such days we were all awakened by a noise which seemed to combine the roar of the angry surf with a riot in the Ford automobile plant. There were also suggestions of a volcano in active eruption. The furnace was boiling! Then one hustled into a dressing-gown and one hurried down to the cellar to shut the thing off; and, as one passed bashfully by, one saw sights through open doors that no gentleman would ever speak of.
We have a friend, however, who has mastered the furnace problem—about as well, that is, as mortal can hope to do it. He has devoted years of thought and much bullion and energy to the task. He has a huge furnace all encased in white asbestos—it sheds its nighty every now and then and has to get a new one—and on this furnace he has more electric attachments than would run a suburban trolley system. All he has to do before he goes to bed is to wind up two or three clocks and set half a dozen hands on as many dials, and the furnace does the rest. It keeps the house at a certain specified heat—unless, of course, it goes out, which it does every so often—and moreover, it will turn on the heat at any specified time in the morning. Instead of having to get up in a chilly house and wander dismally down to the cellar to open the blamed thing up, he has only to lie awake in bed and listen if the regulator is working properly—and three times out of five it is. But, of course, this is rather hard to hear, and if it shouldn't be working and he didn't notice it—well, on those mornings he eats his breakfast in his coon-skin coat.
Naturally he has to remove the ashes and shovel in the coal, but that only takes an hour or so a day. Besides, it is fine exercise. Nothing like putting on your furnace-clothes and tying a damp silk handkerchief over your face and going down for a little bout of græco-roman with the furnace to give you an appetite. And the thirst!—but what's the use of talking about that nowadays?
It may be thought that we are prejudiced against furnaces. We are. We admit it frankly. And we have good reason to be. If it hadn't been for a furnace that went out, we might to-day be a happily married man and the father of a large—oh, well, perhaps that is taking a little too much for granted. But we might have been married, at any rate.
She was a druggist's daughter, a lovely girl of about eighteen summers. That is, she claimed eighteen summers, though perhaps a few summers were so short and so cold that she forgot to count them. Her father lived and had his shop in a Prohibition town—this was before there was no other kind of town. Naturally he was the principal citizen of the place and the popular saver of many masculine lives. Father used to prescribe for gentlemen for miles around, the prescriptions being usually taken in the back of the store. No one ever bought anything out of the show-case except cigars.
We used to drop into the store occasionally to ward off a chill or a fever or something of that sort—we were always strong for preventive medicine—and it was there we met daughter. It was a case of one good long look, a few words about the weather we were having, and then we went straight home and tore up all the pictures on our chiffonier. Not long after we got into the habit of taking her out in father's buggy—it had a large top and the horse could be trusted.
So we whiled away the autumn. At Christmas we sold something and blew the proceeds on a couple of dozen of those red, red roses, which are almost as significant as an engagement-ring. Gwendoline—'t was thus she loved to be called—told us several times with thrilling emphasis that she "just loved those roses to death." Everything seemed to smile upon our suit.
The night we went with our mind made up to settle the matter conclusively—even to the date of the ceremony and the nicest place to spend the following week—was a bitterly cold one. In fact, the parlor where we sat waiting for Gwen to come down seemed decidedly chilly. But she floated in looking radiantly beautiful to the eye of affection, and the light was low, and—oh, dash it all, we forgot about the temperature entirely. It is a poor lover who can't furnish his own heat.
Conversation was graceful and animated, but with an undercurrent of serious purpose. We felt that something was expected of us, but naturally a man of tact and romantic feeling doesn't plunge into a proposal of marriage as though it were the purchase of a dog-collar. It is a thing to be led up to; and we were casting about in our mind for the most graceful and effective way of doing so, when we began to realize that the room had grown strangely cold and that the lady was looking rather blue—with a tendency to redness about the nose. Also she was gazing at us in a curiously critical way, and we remembered that we never look our best when we are chilly. There is a certain spottiness—but these details are unnecessary.