62 AROUND AN OLD HOMESTEAD. 



But, as I sit before the logs, I am reminded espe- 

 cially of that delightful book, of our own country, 

 which most men have read somewhere in their early 

 twenties, or before it, "The Reveries of a Bachelor," 

 by Ik Marvel, for it was beside such a fire, you re- 

 member, that the first of the reveries was dreamed; 

 and in "Dream Life," too, there is mention of the open 

 wood hearth. 



Indeed, there have been a few books named from 

 the fire— Lowell's "Fireside Studies," Mabie's "My 

 Study Fire," Gray's "Camp-fire Musings." But Charles 

 Dudley Warner's "Backlog Studies" is the classic of 

 the old-time fireplace. His books are always delight- 

 ful, and to quote from it with any satisfaction would 

 be to give it all. Warner deprecated the loss of the 

 open wood fire of our ancestors, and defended it with 

 very zealous partisanship. He says that the supreme 

 achievement of woman, and the most convincing evi- 

 dence of her claims to the title of housewife, is for her 

 to maintain the supremacy of the open wood fire. 



It is to our own American Whittier, also, that we 

 are indebted for what are, so far as I have read or can 

 recall, perhaps the best lines written upon the old- 

 fashioned fireplace of the forefathers, in this familiar 

 picture, in his beautiful idyl "Snow-Bound:" 



"As night drew on, and, from the crest 

 Of wooded knolls that ridged the west, 

 The sun, a snow-blown traveler, sank 

 From sight beneath the smothering bank, 

 We piled, with care, our nightly stack 

 Of wood against the chimney-back, — 

 The oaken log, green, huge, and thick, 

 And on its top the stout back-stick ; 

 The knotty fore-stick laid apart, 

 And filled between with curious art 



