WINTER SUNSHINE 19 



at this season without a fire would be like leavincr 



o 



Hamlet out of the play. A smoke is your stand- 

 ard, your flag; it defines and locates your camp at 

 once; 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 am 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 inhos- 

 pitable tones ; and those purple finches there in 

 the cedars, — are they not stealing our berries 1 



How one lingers about a fire under such circum- 

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

 throwing 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 primitive man, which we all carry about with 

 us. He has not yet forgotten his wild, free life, 

 his arboreal habitations, 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 



