WINTER SUNSHINE. 27 



you are an interloper until you have made a fire ; 

 then you take possession ; then the trees and rocks 

 seem to look upon you more kindly, and you look 

 more kindly upon them. As one opens his budget, 

 so he opens his heart by a fire. Already something 

 has gone out from you, and comes back as a faint 

 reminiscence and home feeling in the air and place. 

 One looks out upon the crow or the buzzard that 

 sails by as from his own fireside. It is not I that is a 

 wanderer and a stranger now ; it is the crow and the 

 buzzard. The chickadees were silent at first; but 

 now they approach by little journeys, as if to make 

 our acquaintance. The nuthatches, also, cry " Yank ! 

 yank ! " in no inhospitable tones ; and those purple 

 finches there in the cedars are they not stealing 

 our berries ? 



How one lingers about a fire under such circum- 

 stances, loath to leave it, poking up the sticks, throw- 

 ing in the burnt ends, adding another branch and yet 

 another, and looking back as he turns to go to catch 

 one more glimpse of the smoke going up through 

 the trees ! I reckon it is some remnant of the prim- 

 itive man, which we all carry about with us. He has 

 not yet forgotten his wild, free life, his arboreal habi- 

 tations, and the sweet-bitter times he had in those 

 long-gone ages. With me, he wakes up directly at 

 the smell of smoke, of burning branches. in the open 

 air ; and all his old love of fire and dependence upon / 

 it, in the camp or the cave, comes freshly to mind. 



On resuming our march, we filed off along a 



