136 
THE FASCINATION OF LIGHT 
Light has a strange fascination which takes hold 
of all animated creatures, and commands a subtle 
devotion that cannot be set forth in a confession of 
faith. The delight of a boy in a bonfire is a breath 
of the heaven that is about us in our infancy. Though 
it be but a heap of rubbish, revealed by the removal 
of the mantle of snow, lighting up with flickering, 
changing glow a rectangular door yard, the children 
stand and gaze into the dancing flame, their vast, 
distorted, ghostlike shadows lost in the night, their 
faces reflecting every evanescent glare, and their 
spirits charmed by the same spell that took form in 
the fire-worship of their ancestors. How they delight 
in stirring up the embers and sending up a fountain 
spray of sparks ! What joy in seeing the big sticks 
break into glowing coals, darting out new tongues 
of flame to lick up the escaping embers ! 
Fire is one of nature's universal fascinations. The 
wildest and most wary animals approach and gaze 
at it in the night, and though it sometimes warns 
them off, it always holds them by a spell. The night 
migrating birds perish in scores against the plate 
glass of coast lighthouses, swerving from the control 
of the all-powerful migratory instinct toward the 
fascinating glare that is their destruction. It is not 
sportsmanlike to hang a lantern in the marsh and 
