I HAVE got a quiet farmhouse in the country, a very humble place to be
sure, tenanted by a worthy enough man, of the old New England stamp,
where I sometimes go for a day or two in the winter, to look over the
farm accounts, and to see how the stock is thriving on the winter’s
keep.
One side the door, as you enter from the porch, is a little parlor,
scarce twelve feet by ten, with a cozy-looking fireplace—a heavy oak
floor—a couple of armchairs and a brown table with carved lions’ feet.
Out of this room opens a little cabinet, only big enough for a broad
bachelor bedstead, where I sleep upon feathers, and wake in the morning,
with my eye upon a saucy colored, lithographic print of some fancy
“Bessy.”
It happens to be the only house in the world, of which I am _bona fide_
owner; and I take a vast deal of comfort in treating it just as I
choose. I manage to break some article of furniture almost every time I
pay it a visit; and if I can not open the window readily of a morning,
to breathe the fresh air, I knock out a pane or two of glass with my
boot. I lean against the walls in a very old armchair there is on the
premises, and scarce ever fail to worry such a hole in the plastering as
would set me down for a round charge for damages in town, or make a prim
housewife fret herself into a raging fever. I laugh out loud with
myself, in my big armchair, when I think that I am neither afraid of one
nor the other.
As for the fire, I keep the little hearth so hot as to warm half the
cellar below, and the whole space between the jambs roars for hours
together with white flame. To be sure the windows are not very tight,
between broken panes and bad joints, so that the fire, large as it is,
is by no means an extravagant comfort.
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As night approaches, I have a huge pile of oak and hickory placed beside
the hearth; I put out the tallow candle on the mantel (using the family
snuffers, with one leg broken) then, drawing my chair directly in front
of the blazing wood, and setting one foot on each of the old iron
fire-dogs (until they grow too warm), I dispose myself for an evening of
such sober and thoughtful quietude, as I believe, on my soul, that very
few of my fellow men have the good fortune to enjoy.
My tenant, meantime, in the other room I can hear now and then—though
there is a thick stone chimney and broad entry between—multiplying
contrivances with his wife to put two babies to sleep. This occupies
them, I should say, usually an hour; though my only measure of time (for
I never carry a watch into the country), is the blaze of my fire. By
ten, or thereabouts, my stock of wood is nearly exhausted; I pile upon
the hot coals what remains, and sit watching how it kindles, and blazes,
and goes out—even like our joys! and then slip by the light of the
embers into my bed, where I luxuriate in such sound and healthful
slumber as only such rattling window frames and country air can supply.
But to return: the other evening—it happened to be on my last visit to
my farmhouse—when I had exhausted all the ordinary rural topics of
thought, had formed all sorts of conjectures as to the income of the
year; had planned a new wall around one lot, and the clearing up of
another, now covered with patriarchal wood, and wondered if the little
rickety house would not be, after all, a snug enough box to live and to
die in—I fell on a sudden into such an unprecedented line of thought,
which took such a deep hold of my sympathies—sometimes even starting
tears—that I determined, the next day, to set as much of it as I could
recall on paper.
Something—it may have been the home-looking blaze (I am a bachelor
of—say six and twenty), or possibly a plaintive cry of the baby in my
tenant’s room had suggested to me the thought of—Marriage.
I piled upon the heated fire-dogs, the last armful of my wood; and now,
said I, bracing myself courageously between the arms of my chair—I’ll
not flinch; I’ll pursue the thought wherever it leads, though it lead me
to the d—— (I am apt to be hasty) at least—continued I, softening—until
my fire is out.
The wood was green, and at first showed no disposition to blaze. It
smoked furiously. Smoke, thought I, always goes before blaze; and so
does doubt go before decision: and my reverie, from that very starting
point, slipped into this shape:
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