The Puzzling Fireplace.
The fireplace in a new house was very disappointing. The owner had anticipated the pleasure of sitting by the crackling logs, reading and meditating in the pleasant heat; but he found he had only smoke in which to read and meditate, His eyes became too sore for reading and his mind too fretted for meditation.
He tried a fender of a different shape. No good. Then a hood coming down from above. Still no good. Then a revolving top for the chimney, to catch the wind. Worse than ever. He even had the mason take out the inner bricks of the fireplace. He tried enlarging the opening. Then he tried contracting it. Both were failures.
In despair, he did what he should have done at first, he went to a chimney expert. "Your chimney is too short," said the expert. A foot was added to the top of the chimney, carrying it above the high roof nearby; and, presto! the wood in the fireplace blazed as merrily as could be desired.
Moral: When your life gets smoky and cold and fretful, try pushing the chimney-top of your soul a little nearer heaven.
The Barrier That Held.
It pays to anchor one's life to the fundamental realities. At a seashore home on the Massachusetts coast the winter storms swept away the shore so rapidly that the owner laid upon the sandy bank hundreds of railways ties, fastening them together with firmly spiked, heavy planks. But a storm of unusual severity drove in a fierce sea which lifted the whole affair like bubbles, broke every tie apart, and carried it all a mile along the shore. Then the owner set uprights deep in the sand and made a fence of heavy planks. This barrier holds against the worst storms, because it is anchored down where the waves do not reach. Just such an anchorage religion gives to a life, that it may hold firm against the battering storms of doubt and failure, temptation and sorrow and fear.