necessary to gather a few dry sticks and strike a 

 match. The signal summons the genii, servant of 

 the woodsman. More properly one should use a 

 flint, or rub two sticks together. He allies himself 

 with man against the hosts of darkness and defies 

 the wilderness; a merry fellow, his laugh may be 

 heard in the crackling flames. All through the 

 night he entertains with his merry gossip and with 

 pictures he shows in the fire. At times he reveals 

 his own glowing face in the embers, but quickly 

 assumes the head of a bear or a lynx, or melts away 

 in the flames, to reappear presently in another spot. 

 When I awake, the morning-star hangs low in 

 the heavens like a great lamp, its light an infinitely 

 pure and serene radiance with no suggestion of 

 heat or combustion, made to appeal to some higher 

 vision. A heap of cold gray ashes is all that is left 

 of the fire, in the center a single glowing spot, 

 which may have been the eye of the genii of the 

 night. The black mantle has been lifted, and the 

 earth is illumined by a faint glow, as if solely by 

 the reflected rays of that planet. Unspeakably soft 

 is this light, the forerunner of the dawn, in which 

 the forest is bathed and from which one derives a 

 peculiar satisfaction. 



