The Coal Scuttle

A STUDY IN DOMESTIC ÆSTHETICS

Euphemia, who loves to have home dainty and delightful, would have no
coals if she could dispense with them, much less a coal-scuttle. Indeed,
it would seem she would have no fireplace at all, if she had her will.
All the summer she is happy, and the fireplace is anything but the place
for a fire; the fender has vanished, the fireirons are gone, it is
draped and decorated and disguised. So would dear Euphemia drape and
disguise the whole iron framework of the world, with that decorative and
decent mind of hers, had she but the scope. There are exotic ferns
there, spreading their fanlike fronds, and majolica glows and gleams;
and fabrics, of which Morris is the actual or spiritual begetter,
delight the eye. In summer-time our fireplace is indeed a thing of
beauty, but, alas for the solar system! it is not a joy for ever. The
sun at last recedes beyond the equinoxes, and the black bogey who has
slept awakens again. Euphemia restores the fender kerb and the brazen
dogs and the fireirons that will clatter; and then all the winter,
whenever she sits before the fire, her trouble is with her. Even when
the red glow of the fire lights up her features most becomingly, and
flattery is in her ear, every now and then a sidelong glance at her ugly
foe shows that the thought of it is in her mind, and that the crumpled
roseleaf, if such a phrase may be used for a coal-scuttle, insists on
being felt. And she has even been discovered alone, sitting elbows on
knees, and chin on her small clenched fist, frowning at it, puzzling how
to circumvent the one enemy of her peace.

"_It_" is what Euphemia always calls this utensil, when she can bring
herself to give the indescribable an imperfect vent in speech. But
commonly the feeling is too deep for words. Her war with this foeman in
her household, this coarse rebel in her realm of soft prettiness, is one
of those silent ones, those grim struggles without outcry or threat or
appeal for quarter that can never end in any compromise, never find a
rest in any truce, except the utter defeat of her antagonist. And how
she has tried--the happy thoughts, the faint hopes, the new departures
and outflanking movements! And even to-day there the thing defies her--a
coal-box, with a broad smile that shows its black teeth, thick and
squat, filling a snug corner and swaggering in unmanly triumph over the
outrage upon her delicacy that it commits.

One of Euphemia's brightest ideas was to burn wood. Logs make even a
picturesque pile in a corner--look "uncommon." But there are objections
to wood. Wood finely divided burns with gay quirks and jets of flame,
and making cheerful crackling noises the while; but its warmth and
brightness