"Dead Trees Love the Fire" 155 



long, which burns from morning till late at 

 night, which throws out light enough to do 

 without lamps until the dinner-bell rings, and 

 I am sure that the children who grow up with 

 the remembrance of that firelight hour before 

 their bedtime will be the better for it. It will 

 inculcate in them a love of something healthy, 

 spiritually and physically. Thoreau says: 

 "Dead trees love the fire." 



Of all the woods that we burn upon our big 

 hearth in winter, the balsam pine knots are the 

 most precious, because they send out an aro- 

 matic odor through the room somewhat akin to 

 that of sandalwood. Often, when the gale 

 does not send us a whiff of smoke backing 

 down the chimney, I take a pine knot out of 

 the fire with the tongs and wave it through the 

 room for the sake of getting that peculiar scent, 

 which has always seemed full of medicinal 

 properties. In order to get pine knots of the 

 kind I want, we make two or three trips every 

 summer to a wooded headland within six miles 

 of us, where for a trifle the owner has given me 

 the privilege of cutting down a Jot of old pines 

 that are fit for nothing but firewood or fence 



