THE OPEN WOOD FIRE. 



67 



" And as we talked, the Intense and resinous fire 

 Lit up the towering boles, till nigh and nigher 

 They gather round, a ghostly company, 

 Like beasts who seek to know what men may be." 



That was quite a fire which Shingebis, the diver, 

 had in his lodge, in Longfellow's "Hiawatha," and I 

 question whether it has ever been equaled : 



" Four great logs had he for fire-wood. 

 One for each moon of the winter." 



Dr. W. C. Gray avers that he was able to hear 

 the music of the spheres beside his camp-fire in the 

 Northern woods; and elsewhere in his "Musings by 

 Camp-fire and Wayside" has that stanch old lover of 

 the wild led us into many an attractive train of moral- 

 izings by the firelight. Rowland E. Robinson has 

 written pleasantly of his thoughts beside it; Mr. John 

 Burroughs is a warm enthusiast in its mellowing light; 

 Mr. John Mulr has told us of his camp-fires in the 

 Sierras; and quite recently, also, Mr. Stewart Edward 

 White, in "The Forest," has delighted many with his 

 camp-fire descriptions. 



Mr. Henry van Dyke, however, is its most loyal 

 defender, his sketch on "The Open Fire," in "Fisher- 

 man's Luck," being as readable a paper upon the sub- 

 ject as one could wish. Mr. van Dyke (I may remark, 

 in passing) speaks of using his lunch paper to start his 

 camp-fire with, but, in making our fires, in boyhood 

 days, we used to scorn the use of paper, as belonging 

 more to the usages of civilization, and so always started 

 ours with leaves and twigs, in true woodcraft style. 

 We wanted to be more primitive and savage, and to 

 lie at the side of our "dim religious light" with some 

 sort of sense of fatherhood. 'T was the old wild In- 



