MUSINGS BY CAMP- 

 FIRE AND WAYSIDE 



The Camp-Fire 



MANKIND has never willingly relinquished 

 the camp-fire. It is not preference, but 

 necessity, that has driven him indoors. 

 Even there he carried and rekindled its embers, and 

 it became the hearth-fire : a flame, sister to the flame 

 of love. So much he rescued from the loss of Para- 

 dise. It is not till the overcrowding of his own kind 

 has exterminated the game and ravaged the forests 

 with steel and fire, and not till the increase of com- 

 peting herds has exhausted the pastures, that man 

 will fence in for himself a patch of the wilderness, 

 domesticate for himself a few of its birds and quad- 

 rupeds, and build for himself a castle. Civilization 

 is to him a choice of evils, and he has never forgot- 

 ten nor ceased to long for Paradise, with its unlim- 

 ited breadth and freedom — with its camp-fires glim- 

 mering on distant hill or mountain-side or stream; 

 their rays telling of fellowship, hospitality, and lib- 

 erty. Civilization is tyranny. At its best it is the 



IS 



