you with its very appearance, but those would soon change their opinion if they saw a pile of yellow birch and rock maple laid right “fore and aft” across the bright fire-dogs, the hearth swept up, and the chips beneath fanned with the broom, they would then see the union of light and heat in perfection.  In one way it is preferable to coals, that is, while making on the fire you might if you chose wear white kid gloves without danger of soiling them.  Another comfort to the settler in the back woods is, that every stick you burn makes one less on the land.  Stoves, both for cooking and warming the houses, have long been used in the United States, and are gradually coming into common use in New Brunswick.  In the cities they are generally used, where fuel is expensive, as they require less fuel, and give more heat than open “fire-places;” but the older inhabitants can hardly be reconciled to them; they prefer the rude old hearth stone, with its bright light, to the dark stove.  I remember once spending the evening at a house where the younger part of the family, to be fashionable, had got a new stove placed in the fire-place of “’tother room,” which means, what in Scotland is termed “ben” the house, and in England “the parlour.”  This was the first evening of its being put in operation.  I observed the old gentleman (a first-rate specimen of a blue nose) looked very uncomfortable and fidgetty.  For a time he sat twirling his thumbs in silence, when suddenly a thought seemed to strike him:  he left the room, and shortly after the draught-hole of the stove grew dark, and a cloud of smoke burst forth from it.  The old gentleman came in, declaring he was almost suffocated, and that it was “all owing to that nasty ugly Yankee critter,” the stove.  He instantly had it taken down, and was soon gazing most comfortably on a glorious pile of burning wood, laid on by himself, with the most scientific regard to the laws of levity, concavity, and contiguity requisite in fire-making; and by the twinkle of his eye I knew that he was enjoying the ruse he had employed to get rid of the stove, for he had quietly stopped the flue.  For the mere convenience of the thing, I think a stove is decidedly preferable.  In this country, where people are generally their own cooks as well as everything else, they learn to know how the most and the best work can be done with the least time and trouble.  With the stove there is not that roasting of the face and hands, nor confused jumble of pots and pans, inseparable from a kitchen fire; but upon the neat little polished thing, upon which there is nothing to be seen but a few bright covers, you can have the constituents of a New Brunswick breakfast, “cod-fish and taters,” for twice laid, fried ham, hot rolls, and pancakes, all prepared while the tea kettle is boiling, and experience whilst arranging them no more heat than on a winter morning, is quite agreeable.  In the furniture of these back-wood dwellings there