d and
humbled us.

For ten days we sailed in such luxury as I had never known before; and
when we reached home again it was the splendor of the stream and not the
marvels of the Fair which had permanently enriched me. I have forgotten
almost every feature of the exhibition, but the sunset light falling
athwart the valleys and lighting the sand-bars into burning gold fills
my memory to this day.

Here I must make another confession. Up to this time our big living-room
had no fireplace. I had thrown out bay-windows, tacked on porches, and
constructed bathrooms; but the most vital of all the requisites of a
homestead was still lacking. We had no hearth and no outside chimney.

A fireplace was one of the possessions which I really envied my friends.
I had never said, "I wish I had Bacheller's house," but I longed to
duplicate his fireplace.

Like most of my generation in the West I had been raised beside a stove,
with only one early memory of a fireplace, that in my Uncle David's
home, in the glow of which, nearly forty years before, I had lain one
Thanksgiving night to hear him play the violin--a memory of sweetest
quality to me even now. Zulime's childhood had been almost equally bare.
She had hung her Christmas stockings before a radiator, as I had strung
mine on the wall, behind the kitchen stove. Now suddenly with a small
daughter to think of, we both began to long for a fireplace with a
desire which led at last toward action--on my part, Zulime was hesitant.

"As our stay in the Old Homestead comes always during the summer, it
seems a wilful extravagance to put our hard-earned dollars into an
improvement which a renter would consider a nuisance," she argued.

"Nevertheless I'm going to build a fireplace," I replied.

"You mustn't think of it," she protested.

"Consider what a comfort it would be on a rainy day in June," I
rejoined. "Think what it would do for the baby on dark mornings."

This had its effect, but even then she would not agree to have it built.

Another deterrent lay in the inexperience of our carpenters and masons,
not one of whom had even built a chimney. Everybody had fireplaces in
pioneer days, in the days of the Kentucky rifle, the broad-axe and the
tallow-dip; but as the era of frame houses came on, the arches had been
walled up, and iron stoves of varying ugliness had taken their places.
In all the country-side (outside of LaCrosse) there was not a
hearthstone of the old-fashioned kind