DECEMBER. 309 



parents' home in England; stories, it is hard to under- 

 stand why, that have not been handed down. 



It needs the fire's red glare and sickly candle-light to 

 animate the inky silhouettes upon the wall. They are 

 best stared at in such a light and when a storm rages. 

 The coziness of an open fire leads to contemplation, and 

 a step further, to retrospection. Fancy plays tricks with 

 us on a wild night, when the north wind leaps from the 

 tall pines and screams like a demon as it swoops down 

 the chimney, scattering the ash-hidden sparks that gather 

 again in force and rush headlong after the howling fiend, 

 as it seeks the outer world again. We are ready for wild 

 fancies then ; and when the wind returns, as if repenting 

 of its rashness, mild of mood and sighing dolefully, I hear 

 my ancestors uniting in a prayer to reassemble before 

 these andirons once again. Then the silhouettes take 

 livelier shape, and one after another slowly float before 

 me. What were their whims, or were they always as sober 

 as their portraits ? They are puzzles now; for the women 

 have head-gear no Quaker ever wore, and the men 

 strange overhanging locks of hair that would have en- 

 dangered their status in meeting had they ever worn 

 them. 



But we must not forget the fuel, nor its history. I 

 would not give a fig for straight-grained wood that prompt- 

 ly turns to ashes without protest. Give me, rather, knotty 

 and gnarly sticks that boldly fight for their crookedness, 

 and, at last, become coals that fiercely glare at you in im- 

 potent rage. Better than all is some old stump that has 

 lain long upon the ground and perhaps been tunneled by 

 mice and beetles, and long the fortress of the grim, gray 

 spiders of the woods. These stumps do not find their way 

 to the wood-pile, and are too scattered to be gathered by 

 cartloads. Hence the necessity of systematic chunk-hunt- 

 ing — a most delightful sport. 



