154 ''Dead Trees Love the Fire" 



andirons that have been in use in the family 

 for more than a hundred and fifty years, and 

 it is no small pleasure to dream of the people, 

 long since dead and gone, who have watched 

 the flames reflected in those burnished brass 

 relics of the olden time. The man who has 

 not learned to love a log fire has missed one of 

 the comforts of life; it is the love of a fire 

 which has kept me from moving to Florida or 

 some country where vegetation and gardens 

 flourish the year round. Fond as I am of 

 working among growing things, and eagerly as 

 I look forward year after year to the first dan- 

 delion, I cannot bear the idea of losing my 

 noble blaze and the peculiar odor which a log 

 fire, especially of pine wood, gives to a room 

 when the winter blast outside sends an occa- 

 sional whiff of smoke and flame down the 

 chimney. Along with the petty miseries of 

 life in large cities I should be inclined to place 

 the absence of a wood fire, for even if there is 

 a big fireplace, which is not always the case in 

 a city house of the ordinary type, wood is too 

 dear to allow of its use as I understand it. I 

 want a fire of logs a foot through and four feet 



