The Comforts of Home

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Atlantic monthly Press, 1918 - 106 pages
 

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Page 2 - ... in it. We had admitted that the glass was whole and in good order, and bound ourselves to keep it good, unless broken by fire, with glass of the same kind and quality. In case I became bankrupt I had agreed that the owner, the owner's executors, the owner's administrators, and the owner's assigns should treat me with every form of ignominy that the law has yet invented to make bankruptcy more distressing. Nor could I hold them responsible if our guests fell down the cellar stairs ; although there...
Page 35 - ... instead of a furnace full of fire I had a furnace full of egg coal. I began taking it out, egg by egg, at first with my fingers and then with the tongs from the dining-room fireplace. And when the woman idly questioned me as to what I was going to do down cellar with the tongs, I bit my lip. . . . To the man who runs it (an absurd term as applied to a thing that has no legs and weighs several tons) the furnace is his first thought in the morning and his last thought at night. His calendar has...
Page 30 - ... cold day it goes down ; in zero weather it takes all the time of a determined man to head it off from becoming a large, inconvenient refrigerator. As for bisecting coal bills, the creature likes coal. I have even thought that it made strange, self-congratulatory, happy noises whenever there occurred a rise in the price of its favorite edible. Before meeting this furnace I had lived in apartments, and my mental conception of a ton of coal had been as of something enormous, sufficient to heat the...
Page 40 - In vain he tells himself how splendid, how invigorating will be the plunge from his warm bed right into the fresh, brisk, hygienic morning air. The fresh, brisk, hygienic morning air does not appeal to him. Unwillingly he recalls a line in the superfurnace advertisement, — ' Get up warm and cosy,' — and helplessly wishes that he had such a furnace. 'Like Andrew Carnegie!' he adds bitterly. At that moment he would anarchistically assassinate Andrew, provided he could do it without getting up....
Page 70 - ... take out the new washer, throw it on the floor, stamp on it, kick it out of the way, put in a newer washer, put on the faucet, run down cellar, turn on the water, run up from the cellar, and look at the faucet. If (and this may happen) it still leaks, I make queer, inarticulate, animal noises; but I run down cellar, turn off the water, run up from the cellar, and take off the faucet. Then I monkey a little with the washer (still making those queer animal noises), put on the faucet, run down cellar,...
Page 37 - ... characteristics, faith, hope, and charity. For the man with a Superfurnace life is too easy. ' Toddlekins,' he says to his little daughter, ' press the button.' ' Yes, Papa,' says Toddlekins. She puts down her doll, skips merrily into the front hall, presses the button — and that is all there is to it. But with a furnace like mine a man experiences all the emotions of which he is capable. He loves, he hates, he admires, he despises, he grieves, he exults. There have been times when I have felt...
Page 68 - know a plumber who had grown rich?" Now until that winter I had never thought of the plumber as a man in many respects like myself. One may winter for years in a city apartment without meeting a plumber, but hardly without reading a good many humorous trifles about them in current literature ; and my idea of this craftsman had been insidiously...
Page 72 - ... faucet. Perhaps it leaks more. Perhaps it leaks less. So I run down cellar — and turn off the water — and run up from the cellar — and take off the faucet. Then, talking aloud to myself, I take out the new washer, throw it on the floor, stamp on it, kick it out of the way, put in a newer washer, put on the faucet, run down cellar, turn on the water, run up from the cellar, and look at the faucet. If (and this may happen) it still leaks, I make queer, inarticulate, animal noises; but I run...
Page 8 - Just suppose,' whispered Misgiving, 'that the man who was hired to take that bureau upstairs found that it would n't go up! ! ! !' And I thought of that stairway, that went up furtively from the diningroom that had once been the kitchen, a delightful stairway (especially when one realized what a discouraging time a burglar would have in finding it, and how he would probably find the cellar stairs instead and die of a broken neck at the bottom), but narrow, narrow; and with a right angle just where...
Page 4 - Drolatiques in the library, play bass-drum solos in the parlor, and start a piggery in the cellar. One suspects that possibly the great army of hoboes is partly recruited from among supersensitive men who read their leases before signing them and preferred vagabondage to insult. But some of us control our sensitiveness. I, for example, read my lease; and when, having agreed mentally to post no placard myself, I discovered a clause allowing the lessor to decorate my residence with the information...

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