It
is not that good-will is wanting, but that life is more complicated. The
burdens are more evenly distributed, and no class is free and at
leisure. But to fret over our disadvantages, and to extol the past, is
only to ignore the price that was paid for those advantages we covet.
There was always somebody to sweat for that leisure. Would a society
divided into castes be better? Or again, who would like to have his
children sleep three in a bed, and live in the kitchen, in order that
the best rooms should always be swept and garnished for company?
In every case, unless a man is rich enough to have two houses in one, it
comes to choice between domestic comfort and these occasional
facilities. Direct connection of rooms usually involves the sacrifice of
the chimney-corner, on one or both sides; for it is not pleasant to sit
in a passage-way, even if it be rarely used. For use in cold weather the
available portion of a room may be reckoned as limited by the door
nearest the fireplace.
It will be noticed that this supposes the use of open fireplaces. The
open fireplace is not a necessary of life, but it is one of the first
luxuries, and one that no man who can afford to eat meat every day can
afford to dispense with. No furnace can supply the place of it; for,
though the furnace is an indispensable auxiliary in severe cold, and
though, well managed, it need not vitiate the air, yet, like all
contrivances for supplying heated air instead of heat, it has the
insurmountable defect of not warming the body directly, nor until all
the surrounding air be warmed first, and thus stops the natural reaction
and the brace and stimulus derived from it.
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