The reason why I impress upon my readers the necessity of a stove is that I cannot believe but that we should be saved an immense amount of illness were we yet more particular about an equal temperature than we are. As a rule our rooms are fairly warm, but in the winter our passages are like ice, they cannot help being so; windows must be opened and the outer doors cannot be kept hermetically sealed, and the moment we leave our fireside or the rooms where we have fires, we get a sudden chill which cannot fail to try us terribly, even if it results in nothing worse; besides which a fearful cold draught comes into our sitting-room the moment the doors are open, and we shiver and throw on more coal--coal that we should not require were the hall warmed as it ought to have been, and which would allow us to even leave our sitting-room door open should we desire to do so. Now our first exclamation to an incoming friend is: ‘Oh, please shut the door!’ and we dismiss him or her with the same pleasing but necessary injunction. I was delighted to see in one of the papers the other day that there had been a most remarkable diminution in that fatal scourge of our ancestresses--consumption; for I am certain this is entirely due to the fact that we are far more sensible about our clothing, and much more lavish about firing, than our fathers used to be; and I feel convinced, were we to have still more fires, and were we to taboo low [Illustration: FIG. 5.--Hall Wardrobe (No. 1).] [Illustration: FIG. 6.--Hall Wardrobe (No. 2).]