Fireside Fancies 



me ashore I should surely ask for 

 Thoreau's Walden, and copies of Vir- 

 gil, Horace, Wordsworth, "Bobby" 

 Burns, and our own author of Evan- 

 geline and Hiawatha. Yes, and I 

 would not forget a precious well- 

 thumbed Shelley, in which is writ- 

 ten this inscription "With happy 

 Christmas greetings from a friend." 

 The hand that wrote that line in the 

 long ago could not direct the pen with 

 such copper-plate exactness now, I 

 fancy, but the skylark ode is there, 

 the immortal "Hymn to Pan," and 

 the "Song of the Faded Violet." 



How fierce and all-consuming are 

 those first newly-kindled flames upon 

 the hearth! Their primal inspiration 

 may be nothing more substantial or 

 enduring than pine and paper and a 

 tiny match, but how they leap and 

 blaze and set the flickering shadows 

 dancing! In all this world there is 

 nothing so joyously contagious. All 

 the world loves to watch the merry 



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