ernoon," said Roger. "When I stepped into
that little stationery shop to get a newspaper I noticed in the rear a
queer tin thing with what looked like cotton wool sticking against its
back wall. I asked the woman who sold the papers what it was."

"Trust Roger for not letting anything pass him," smiled Ethel Brown.

"That's why I'm such a cyclopedia of accurate information, ma'am,"
Roger retorted. "She said it was a stove."

"With cotton wool for fuel?" laughed Ethel Blue.

"It seems they use natural gas here for heating as well as cooking, and
the woolly stuff was asbestos. The gas is turned on at the foot of the
back wall and the asbestos becomes heated and gives off warmth but
doesn't burn."

"I stayed in Pittsburg once in a boarding house where the rooms were
heated with natural gas," said Mr. Emerson. "It made a sufficient heat,
but you had to be careful not to turn the burner low just before all the
methodical Pittsburgers cooked dinner, for if you made it too low the
flame might go out when the pressure was light."

"Did the opposite happen at night?"

"It did. In the short time I was there the newspapers noted several
cases of fires caused by people leaving their stoves turned up high at
night and the flames bursting into the room and setting fire to some
inflammable thing near at hand when the pressure grew strong after the
good Pittsburgers went to bed."

"It certainly is useful," commended Mrs. Morton. "A turn of the key and
that's all."

"No coal to be shovelled--think of it!" exclaimed Roger, who took care
of several furnaces in winter. "No ashes to be sifted and carried away!
The thought causes me to burst into song," and he chanted ridicuously:--

"Given a tight tin stove, asbestos fluff,
A match of wood, an iron key, and, puff,
Thou, Natural Gas, wilt warm the Arctic wastes,
And Arctic wastes are Paradise enough."

As the train drew out of the city the young people's expectations of
fairyland were not fulfilled.

"I don't see anything but dirt and horridness, Grandfather," complained
Ethel Brown.

Mr. Emerson looked out of the window thoughtfully for a moment.

"True," he answered, "it's not yet dark enough for the magic to work."

"No wonder everything is sooty and grimy with those chimneys all around
us throwing out tons and tons of soft coal smoke to settle over
everything. Don't they ever stop?"

"They're at it twenty-four hours a day," returned her grandfather.