250 DAYS OUT OF DOORS. 



matters not that the fire burns with renewed vigor ; there 

 is little comfort in a blistered face while your shoulders 

 ache with cold. How I long for the high-backed settle 

 that graced the kitchen fire-place forty years ago ! Then 

 you could snap your fingers at the wind though it blew 

 a hurricane; now you are largely at the east wind's 

 mercy. 



Find the pin-hole through which the monster rushes 

 before resuming work or play. Shut it out, or, though 

 you were soaring afar off in the realms of fancy, you will 

 be brought back ingloriously to the level of plain prose. 

 When finally I had guarded my fort against another 

 such assault of the wind fiends, I placed the remaining 

 stick upon the andirons a gnarly, hollow, twisted knot 

 of oak and settled to an hour of retrospection ; but the 

 men and women of colonial times were not called up, as I 

 had hoped. Instead, a redbacked salamander trotted from 

 that last stick, and in blank astonishment stared at the 

 fire and then darted toward me. The fender checked it, 

 and it became frantic. I gave it full liberty as promptly 

 as I could, and now it is cowering in a far corner. When 

 fumbling among the books piled there I shall one day 

 find its shriveled skin, but I need not search for it now 

 that its history may be written. 



Spiders, centipedes, beetles, and 'such small deer have 

 often crawled from the rough wood that I gather along 

 the hill-side, and once a mouse crept from a stump I 

 dragged from the meadows after a freshet ; but never be- 

 fore a salamander. If this was a common occurrence in 

 days of yore, no wonder that these creatures should have 

 been held in horror by the good folks of colonial times, 

 especially if their only knowledge of them came in such a 

 way, which is scarcely possible. At any rate, this horror 

 at length took shape in the belief that salamanders were 

 bred in the fire, and another phase of it was that too long 



