344 OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS 



it <by the Yule fire, that Santa Claus might load it 

 with gifts. Nowadays we hang the stocking in 

 its stead, perhaps because it holds more. 



I do not take it kindly of old Ben Franklin that 

 he, almost an hundred years ago, with his Poor 

 Richard wisdom taught us to economize our fuel 

 by shutting up our fire in stoves, for what we 

 gained in the flesh we lost in the spirit, and it is 

 good that in the modern house, however mechani- 

 cally complicated the heating apparatus, we build 

 fireplaces once again that our souls may be 

 warmed with the sight of the flame. The im- 

 pulse to worship fire still lingers within us and 

 though we have better creeds than that of 

 Zoroaster and truer spiritual ideals than the 

 Parsees we can have no more appealing symbol of 

 the purely spiritual than flame. Phlogiston 

 might well be another word for soul and we are 

 unkind to the old philosophers to take them too 

 literally. The alchemists were dreamers rather 

 than doers after all, and though it is the fashion 

 to laud the doers it is often the dreamers that 

 see most clearly. As the flame leapt upward 

 from the burning wood they saw in it a rare, pure, 

 ethereal substance which they called Phlogiston. 



