Excerpt from A History of the United States, Vol. 4

Up to 1800, house warming was by means of wood fires in the old-fashioned fireplaces, although Franklin and Count Rumford had already designed more effective means for util izing the heat of burning wood and coal. About 1809 adver tisements of stoves and furnaces begin to appear in the news papers.l Jefferson used coal brought from Richmond by water to heat the presidential mansion during a part of his term of office, 2 and not many years were to pass away before John Pierce was having semi-bituminous coal delivered at his house in Brookline for twelve dollars a ton. Taking everything into consideration and making all possible allow ances for the imperfection of such records as are accessible, Qt seems that the difierence in the cost of living between the beginning and the ending of the nineteenth century was due to the confinement of one' 8 expenditures in 1800 for the most part to things that were produced near at hand, and to the great paucity of opportunity for expenditure on amusements and other accessories of existence.

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