I was talking with my friend Leonard about the matter of keeping a house warm in the depths of a northern Michigan winter, and he asked if I knew what the most beautiful sound in the world was. I replied, dutifully, that I did not, and Leonard got a faraway look in his eyes and told me.

“The most beautiful sound in the world,” he said, “is that unobtrusive, fluttery, pulsating noise you hear at daybreak on a January morning when the electric heat control turns on the automatic furnace. Outside the snow is two feet deep and a howling wind is bringing more, but that isn’t what you hear; you’re aware of it, but you don’t hear it, or feel it either. What you know is that the house is getting warm while you are still in bed. You didn’t get up to start the furnace, and last night when you went to bed you didn’t do a thing except set a little dial that would keep things at a proper temperature during the night and boost the temperature just so when morning came. Pretty soon you get up and you are perfectly comfortable, and it was no strain at all.”

Leonard spoke with feeling which I understood because my boyhood and his were spent in the same frost-bitten village shortly after the turn of the century. Wood was the fuel everybody used. It was cheap and plentiful, coal cost too much, and as far as we were concerned heat derived from oil, gas, or electricity did not exist. Big chunks of seasoned maple or beech burned well and gave lots of heat, but it took a huge number of them to get you through a winter and the man who tended the furnace had to handle all of them, one chunk at a time. A wood-burning furnace called for a great deal of work, all of which had to be performed either by the head of the household or by the ranking boy in the family. At one time or another, over a period of years, Leonard had held both of these positions, so when he mentioned beautiful sounds he spoke with feeling.

Daytimes the furnace was no great problem. You had to keep tending it, of course, and as you did you learned much about how fires should be laid, lit, and kept alive, but it wasn’t so bad; the real trouble came after dark. You had a brisk fire all evening, of course, because everybody was at home, and when the others went off to bed you went to the basement to bank the fire for the night. You had (you hoped) a big bed of glowing coals, and on it you piled as many chunks as the firebox would hold, and then you closed the draft and checked the damper (I think I have those words right: it has been a long, long time), and