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Updated: April 30, 2025
She dropped down into the upholstered chair beside the base-burner, the pink and moisture of exertion out in her face, took to fanning herself with the end of a face-towel flung across her arm. "Poor gramaw!" she said. "Poor gramaw!" Miss Coblenz sat down on the edge of a slim, home-gilded chair, and took to gathering the blue-silk dress into little plaits at her knee.
"Evenin', Ase," observed the captain, folding the sheet of paper and putting it into his pocket. "Glad you come. Sit down. I wanted to ask you somethin'." "All right! Here I be. Heave ahead and ask." Captain Cy puffed at his pipe. He seemed about to speak and then to think better of it, for he crossed his legs and smoked on in silence, gazing at the nickel work of the "base-burner" stove.
And when he rummaged a bureau, and brought forth an old jeweler's catalogue, asking her to choose a watch for Sammy, she felt that it was granted; but she did not yet know Quinbey. Sammy wore the watch proudly; and for the rest of the cold weather the three sat about the base-burner, while the color came back to the little woman's face, and self-confidence to the shaken mind of Sammy.
We had read of the beautiful observance of the feast by the Moravians, and, while I was hurrying on my clothes beside my faithful base-burner, I kept quite superfluously wondering at myself for not having thought of it, and so made sure of being called. I had waked just in time, though I hadn't deserved to do so, and ought, by right, to have missed it all.
She did not attempt to draw until her sulks left her, which occurred after the jeweler, intent upon the sale of a watch, had called upon her, and when the villagers had informed her that Quinbey had gone fishing. Then, disappointed, and somewhat worried over the future, she returned to the house on the hill, and, as it was still cold, lit up the big base-burner from the scanty stock of coal.
When it rains the air may be chilly, in doors or out, but it is never cold enough to make the remorseless base-burner a welcome alternative. The habit of roasting one's self all winter long is unknown in California. The old Californian seldom built a fire for warmth's sake. When he was cold in the house he went out of doors to get warm.
Thekla rose and went to the door; as she opened it a fierce gust of wind slashed her like a knife, and Lieders exclaimed, fretfully, "what you opening that door for, Thekla, letting in the wind? I'm so cold, now, right by the fire, I most can't draw. We got to keep a fire in the base-burner good, all night, or the plants will freeze."
In the short time I sat there I wondered if the occupants appreciated the good things around them. How could they, if they had never known hunger and cold and discomfort? These queries kept entering my mind: "Will such furniture as this ever be mine? Will I ever be the owner of a stove as nice as that base-burner? Will carpets as luxurious as these ever belong to me?
To these he added, bringing them from the crowded garret of the homestead, oil paintings of ships commanded by his father and grandfather, and family portraits, executed which is a peculiarly fitting word by deceased local artists in oil and crayon. He boarded up the fireplace in the sitting room and installed a base-burner stove, resurrected from the tinsmith's barn.
And now here they lean against the hearth, that very pair. I packed them in the bottom of my trunk when I started for college; I saved them through the years when our open fire was a "base-burner," and then a gas-radiator in a city flat. Moved, preserved, "married" these many years, they stand at last where the boy must have dreamed them standing that hot July day, how long, long ago!
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