236 Next to the Ground 



soon it was strong enough, hot enough to gnaw 

 through the stoutest stems. If they were 

 hickory stems they writhed in the fire like 

 things of life. Hickory brush keeps its sap, 

 long after oak and poplar are bone-dry. A 

 pile of it will hardly catch unless weighted, or 

 thickly underlaid with finer brush. But once 

 well afire it makes a magnificent flame, red 

 and leaping, and full at the heart of twisting 

 fiery serpents. Any big brush heap, indeed, 

 in a decent burning wind, makes a beautiful 

 fire, the flames leap and flicker, and blow off 

 in long fading sheets, or snap and curl like 

 whip-lashes, twenty feet in air. 



Joe wondered no little what his English 

 ancestors would have thought of the log heaps. 

 Plenty of folks in Tennessee said Major 

 Baker was dreadfully extravagant of timber, 

 wasting so much good wood a little bit 

 more work would save. Some of them said 

 it to the Major himself. He only smiled in 

 answer. The Major kept books with his 

 plantation by a curious sort of double entry. 

 Whatever increased the strength and heart of 

 a field struck him in the light of a good in- 

 vestment, and nobody knew better than he 

 that the more log heaps were burned upon a 

 piece of fresh land, the longer it would bring 

 big crops without manure, let the season be 

 wet or dry. Besides, since his firewood cost 



