We first learned the great importance of these morning and evening fires at the West, and should have been thankful to have learned it by an easier way than through the rough school of experience. What was a good theory and better practice in the new Western life is equally beneficial in any locality where cool nights and mornings precede and follow each day, or where sudden changes from dry to damp or rainy weather may be expected. It is not at all necessary or wise in warm weather to build large fires that will heat a room. Only so much is needed as will suffice to dispel the chill damp of the atmosphere, of which one is usually conscious on entering a room early in the morning or soon after nightfall. A few sticks of light wood or a small fagot of brush will suffice. In the city it is not always easy to find material for this purpose; but in the country, whether in an old place or new, there is no difficulty, and no excuse for neglect. Small sticks, and any quantity of brush, from constantly needed repairs or pruning, are always scattered about, which, if not daily gathered up, will soon accumulate, till heaps of unsightly rubbish will meet the eye at every turn. If only for the sake of neatness, and to _save time_, all this should be daily removed. It is not much labor, and a very short time is sufficient. If you have young boys or girls with you, rightly trained to be useful, an hour or two of outdoor labor will give them pleasant and healthful occupation. Provide them with a child’s saw-horse and saw, a small, light hatchet, and a ball of strings, and let them daily go out and collect such brush as may be lying around. Show them how to cut it in proper lengths, and to tie the fagots neatly. Then they can easily, with a light wheelbarrow, take them to the wood-house or shed, and pile them ready for use. A half-hour’s or an hour’s work every day will do this, and the young folks will not feel it a burden. But if left a week or two, the brush becomes tangled, the heap grows larger, and what should be only pleasant recreation becomes a burden, perhaps really too heavy for children to undertake, and either a man’s time must be given to the work, or industry and labor be made repulsive to the young. That is also a great mistake. But by having this work regularly done, at certain hours daily, by your children, a threefold good may be gained: the house, grounds, and surroundings can be kept free from disagreeable litter; the means secured at the same time, with little labor and no cost, to preserve a healthful atmosphere all through the house; and your children taught a lesson in neatness and industry which they will not in after years forget, and which, whatever their position in life, will always be valuable.