Home with a Hearth

"I dream of a home with a hearth-fire in it, a cat and a dog, the footsteps of friends ~ and you!"

In her journal on Sept. 25, 1910, L.M. Montgomery wrote, "How I do love an open fireplace. I love it so much that I feel sure I shall never have one of my own. No, I shall be doomed to stuffy stoves or -- worse still! -- a radiator all my live."

Lucy Ward Montgomery, Canadian author (1874 - 1942) The Selected Journals of L.M.M. Vol.II, Oxford University Press, 1987

(Journals, letters, scrapbooks, photographs, personal papers and library are the property of the University of Guelph, Ontario.)

Click on photo to view larger image. Scroll right to find the snowblower and shovel. Photo: Michaye Walker

Mark Twain's Fireside

"I know the look of an apple that is roasting and sizzling on the hearth on a winter's evening, and I know the comfort that comes of eating it hot, along with some sugar and a drench of cream...I know how the nuts taken in conjunction with winter apples, cider, and doughnuts, make old people's tales and old jokes sound fresh and crisp and enchanting."
Mark Twain, American author and humourist (1835-1910) Extract from his autobiography.

And from a letter written by Mr. R.J.Burdette after a visit to Twain's home:

"I am not a man addicted to cold weather. I am not sufficiently 'British' to wander through December and January in short checked coat and no ulster. I am given to much wrapping up when I do go out in the snow, and to very little going out in the snow at all. I begin to shiver with the first frost, and I keep it up until the following April. And so when I can sit down before a bright wood fire and burn up cigars while somebody entertains me. I love the icy winter."

Janice Anderson, Fireside, A Family Companion, MQ Publications Ltd.,2004