THE OPEN WOOD FIRE. 



59 



Pray, set it down, and rest you : when this burns, 

 'Twill weep for having wearied you. 



If you '11 sit down, 

 I '11 bear your logs the while. Pray, give me that ; 

 I '11 carry it to the pile.' . . . 



Ferdinand. — 'Hear my soul speak : 



The very instant that I saw you, did 

 My heart fly to your service : there resides, 

 To make me slave to it : and for your sake 

 Am I this patient log-man.' " 



And finally, in "All's Well that Ends Well," the 

 clown says to the Lord Lafeu, "I am a woodland fel- 

 low, sir, that always loved a great fire;" such a fire, 

 one might infer, as Is a common sight in our wooded 

 America. 



It was beside a neatherd's hearth, according to the 

 story, that Alfred the Great had the mortification of 

 letting his cakes burn. I think, too, of the spacious 

 hall in the mansion of Cedric the Saxon, with its roar- 

 ing, yawning fireplaces, as pictured in "Ivanhoe," and 

 of the other wild hearths that Scott has described. 

 Leigh Hunt has a pleasant essay entitled "A Day by 

 the Fire," but I have always thought it would have 

 been better if his had been an open wood hearth instead 

 of a grate of coal. It is beside a coal fire, however, 

 that Dickens places his cricket, with the kettle above 

 it, and tells us in its chirpings that the reason the hearth 

 is so dear and sweet is because it is the symbol of home 

 and happiness. "To have a cricket on the hearth is the 

 luckiest thing in the world." 



That is a pretty picture which Burns dre^y in "The 

 Cotter's Saturday Night," when the laborer returns 



