Unusual cooking capacity in a small space is really one of the great advantages of the new stoves. Know your space, your family needs and then buy your stove from one of the best makers or order it through your gas company. Manufacturers have tried to beautify their stoves, but when you buy see to it that you buy comfort first. A gas range should keep in first class condition for at least fifteen years--that is, if you buy the best and take reasonable care of it. All kinds of stove combinations can be had: gas and coal, gas, coal and electricity, electricity and gas, oil and electricity, etc. So every taste, every necessity can be met in stoves to-day. There is but one rule--buy what you need and the best of its kind. CHAPTER VIII THE OIL RANGE What makes it possible to live in gasless, electricless, coal-less, transportationless places in gustatorial ease and digestive comfort? The oil range. Not the old-time messy oil stove, but the efficient, capacious oil range. In districts unopened to modern improvements cooking is made a pleasure rather than a drudgery, with this highly effective medium, so effective that nothing that can be done on any other type of stove need be omitted in the daily routine. It has the maximum comfort and the minimum cost and trouble. This range too need never be lighted until wanted and can be “put to bed,” immediately upon finishing the meal. So now there need be no place where man can not have his puddings, his breads, or his flap-jacks with speed and finish. The two most important types of oil stoves with which it is worth your while to become acquainted are the wick and the wickless (kindler type). It is quite evident from their descriptive titles that the former employs a wick as heat carrier to the vessel in which is the food; and the wickless has the kindler by which the heat is carried to the food in a different way. The wick oil range is a development born directly of the lamp. It employs the round wick and with it in its best form a long chimney is used. This long draught chimney has proven in the case of the lamp to make for perfect combustion of the oil. Hence after many years of trial and proof the wick stove is developed to a delightful point of comfort and utility. Speed, lack of odor and perfect work, three necessities of any stove, are here exemplified, to say nothing of longevity and ease of upkeep. You have probably used the heat from a lamp chimney to light a cigarette or a match or even to heat a curling iron? Well, this is really the principle of the wick stove. This heat has been harnessed and petted into cooking usefulness by expert heat and stove engineers. The parts of the wick stove with which you must be acquainted are few but important: 1. The burner 2. The wick 3. Flame spreader 4. Brass wick tube (a fine feature, in that it is of brass) 5. Clamp set screw 6. Hand wheel to adjust screw