I had always regarded the humorous paragraphs about the price of coal as
mere pleasantries. I now deny that they are pleasantries, and they are
far from "mere."
There are several grades of coal. Our furnace takes No. 3, and it's
$6.60 a ton, April price. The man who dominates the situation told me by
way of consolation that if it hadn't been for the big strike coal would
be 50 cents a ton cheaper. I can't see how that sort of consolation
helps a fellow.
Our house burns about ten or twelve tons, normal conditions. We figured
that about eight tons now would be the proper caper, and we could pay
the difference next winter if driven to it. From the way the furnace ate
coal to take the chill off the house the first day, I could see the
Board of Charities asking me my name, address, age, social condition and
whether my parents ever went to jail.
Now $6.60 times eight tons is $52.80, and that's more than taxes, water
rent and interest on a house and lot. So when the man backed up with a
cartload and began to throw it in off-handedly, I was pained. A
coal-heaver should treat $52.80 with more respect. I have seen men
throw high-grade ore out of the Independence mine with the same callous
indifference, without myself being shocked; but here was a new
situation. It was my $52.80 he was throwing around like dirt, and I
spoke to him about it.
"How," I said, "can you have the heart to dump $52.80 into my cellar
without ceremony? You should at least remove your hat."
Do you know, I don't believe he appreciated the situation.
William made the first fire. I instructed him to lay on the coal as
scarcely as possible, and to go slow with the draughts. So he threw on
six shovelsful of my $52.80, opened everything and ran it up to 204
degrees F. Any man who sat ten minutes in our house and then dared to
expose himself in a Turkish steam room would freeze to death in ten
seconds.
We had a fire in the furnace two or three days. I got interested in (a)
a newly patented ash sifter (b) and a process for mixing ashes with some
chemical solution that would restore a ton of coal for twenty-five
cents. If you have never sifted ashes, you've missed something. You take
a couple of shovelsful of ashes and dump them in the sifter. Then you
pick up the sifter and agitate it. If I were employing an ash sifter, I
should get one addicted to chills and ague, or St. Vitus' dance, or
something. Then I could be sure he wasn't loafing on the job! Well,
after you've shivered the sifter, busted a suspender button, twisted
your backbone into a pretzel, filled your eyes, ears, nose, and lungs
with dust and cussed your patron saint, you've got the net result: One
piece of half-burned coal, six clinkers, and the top of a tin can.
That chemical process to make coal out of ashes for a quarter a ton is a
good thing--for the inventor. With childlike confidence I bought a
bottle of it. After ruining a barrel of perfectly good ashes and
backsliding from the church of Martin Luther I gave it up. Hereafter we
will burn our coal as long as it will burn, and the ashes may go hang! I
could have earned $50 at my profession in the time I was trying to beat
an honest coal dealer out of $6.60.
Well, when we finally got the furnace working I hopped into the shower
bath.
May good fortune attend the man who thought of putting a shower bath in
That House I Bought! The water comes from overhead for one thing, and
shoots into the delighted legs of the languorous for another, from the
sides. It invigorates, cleanses, and tickles.
Ballington Booth says man is regenerated by soup, soap, and salvation.
But I would say, at first blush, that no man can get the full effect of
regeneration on anything short of a shower bath in his house.
I began by reducing my costume to a pleasant frame of mind and doing a
few acrobatic stunts, deep breathing, setting-up exercises, and various
liver-limberings. A free and easy perspiration set in. That, say all the
doctors, is good for the system. Then I stepped blithely into the
shower, drew the rubber curtain close and, commending my soul to all the
gods I could call to mind, took a long breath and turned her on.
At first the water was icy cold, but as soon as that in the pipes had
run out I was violently assaulted by a steaming deluge straight from the
bowels of Hades. Calmly removing the first layer of skin as it was
boiled off, I reached for the spigot and turned as per directions, to
the right. Instantly some one threw an iceberg into the tank and at the
first shower of Chilkootian damp I was converted into an icicle.
Boiled to a color that would excite the envy of an ambitious lobster, on
one side, and frozen to a consistency that would inspire a Harlequin
block on the other, my emotions ran correspondingly hot and cold to a
delirium of despair, as I found that no matter how I turned I got
either hot or cold, and never a happy medium. My wife, who was
downstairs with the kitchen door shut, said she could hear my remarks
distinctly, and added that she would have forever hung her head in shame
had company been calling at the time.
Women are too sensitive.
It didn't occur to me, until I had been cooked and uncooked a dozen
times that this thing might be done from the outside just as well. I
stepped out and manipulated with a broom handle, poking it behind the
curtain and jabbing, pushing, and pulling, hauling, twisting at those
infernal mechanical devices with an energy born of insanity. Finally,
by some accident or other, I got the water just right and stepped in
again.
It was delicious. Never was there such a grateful sense of appreciation
as that I felt as I recovered my temper and went back to my beneficent
gods. The water was not too cold, not too hot.
Then it stopped altogether.
I looked up and around, tried all the valves, hammered on the wall, and
then yelled to my wife:
"What's the matter with the water?"
She replied cheerily:
"The man has come to fix the pipes in the furnace, and it's turned
off!"
With good things it were always thus. The minute a man really begins to
enjoy life it's time to die. There is always a fly in the custard.