I
The fire on the hearth has almost gone out in New England; the hearth
has gone out; the family has lost its center; age ceases to be
respected; sex is only distinguished by a difference between
millinery bills and tailors' bills; there is no more toast-and-cider;
the young are not allowed to eat mince-pies at ten o'clock at night;
half a cheese is no longer set to toast before the fire; you scarcely
ever see in front of the coals a row of roasting apples, which a
bright little girl, with many a dive and start, shielding her sunny
face from the fire with one hand, turns from time to time; scarce are
the gray-haired sires who strop their razors on the family Bible, and
doze in the chimney-corner. A good many things have gone out with
the fire on the hearth.
I do not mean to say that public and private morality have vanished
with the hearth. A good degree of purity and considerable happiness
are possible with grates and blowers; it is a day of trial, when we
are all passing through a fiery furnace, and very likely we shall be
purified as we are dried up and wasted away. Of course the family is
gone, as an institution, though there still are attempts to bring up
a family round a "register." But you might just as well try to bring
it up by hand, as without the rallying-point of a hearthstone. Are
there any homesteads nowadays? Do people hesitate to change houses
any more than they do to change their clothes? People hire houses as
they would a masquerade costume, liking, sometimes, to appear for a
year in a little fictitious stone-front splendor above their means.
Thus it happens that so many people live in houses that do not fit
them. I should almost as soon think of wearing another person's
clothes as his house; unless I could let it out and take it in until
it fitted, and somehow expressed my own character and taste. But we
have fallen into the days of conformity. It is no wonder that people
constantly go into their neighbors' houses by mistake, just as, in
spite of the Maine law, they wear away each other's hats from an
evening party. It has almost come to this, that you might as well be
anybody else as yourself.
Am I mistaken in supposing that this is owing to the discontinuance
of big chimneys, with wide fireplaces in them? How can a person be
attached to a house that has no center of attraction, no soul in it,
in the visible form of a glowing fire, and a warm chimney, like the
heart in the body? When you think of the old homestead, if you ever
do, your thoughts go straight to the wide chimney and its burning
logs. No wonder that you are ready to move from one fireplaceless
house into another. But you have something just as good, you say.
Yes, I have heard of it. This age, which imitates everything, even
to the virtues of our ancestors, has invented a fireplace, with
artificial, iron, or composition logs in it, hacked and painted, in
which gas is burned, so that it has the appearance of a wood-fire.
This seems to me blasphemy. Do you think a cat would lie down before
it? Can you poke it? If you can't poke it, it is a fraud. To poke
a wood-fire is more solid enjoyment than almost anything else in the
world. The crowning human virtue in a man is to let his wife poke
the fire. I do not know how any virtue whatever is possible over an
imitation gas-log. What a sense of insincerity the family must have,
if they indulge in the hypocrisy of gathering about it. With this
center of untruthfulness, what must the life in the family be?
Perhaps the father will be living at the rate of ten thousand a year
on a salary of four thousand; perhaps the mother, more beautiful and
younger than her beautified daughters, will rouge; perhaps the young
ladies will make wax-work. A cynic might suggest as the motto of
modern life this simple legend,--"just as good as the real." But I am
not a cynic, and I hope for the rekindling of wood-fires, and a
return of the beautiful home light from them. If a wood-fire is a
luxury, it is cheaper than many in which we indulge without thought,
and cheaper than the visits of a doctor, made necessary by the want
of ventilation of the house. Not that I have anything against
doctors; I only wish, after they have been to see us in a way that
seems so friendly, they had nothing against us.
My fireplace, which is deep, and nearly three feet wide, has a broad
hearthstone in front of it, where the live coals tumble down, and a
pair of gigantic brass andirons. The brasses are burnished, and
shine cheerfully in the firelight, and on either side stand tall
shovel and tongs, like sentries, mounted in brass. The tongs, like
the two-handed sword of Bruce, cannot be wielded by puny people. We
burn in it hickory wood, cut long. We like the smell of this
aromatic forest timber, and its clear flame. The birch is also a
sweet wood for the hearth, with a sort of spiritual flame and an even
temper,--no snappishness. Some prefer the elm, which holds fire so
well; and I have a neighbor who uses nothing but apple-tree wood,--a
solid, family sort of wood, fragrant also, and full of delightful
suggestions. But few people can afford to burn up their fruit trees.
I should as soon think of lighting the fire with sweet-oil that comes
in those graceful wicker-bound flasks from Naples, or with manuscript
sermons, which, however, do not burn well, be they never so dry, not
half so well as printed editorials.
Few people know how to make a wood-fire, but everybody thinks he or
she does. You want, first, a large backlog, which does not rest on
the andirons. This will keep your fire forward, radiate heat all
day, and late in the evening fall into a ruin of glowing coals, like
the last days of a good man, whose life is the richest and most
beneficent at the close, when the flames of passion and the sap of
youth are burned out, and there only remain the solid, bright
elements of character. Then you want a forestick on the andirons;
and upon these build the fire of lighter stuff. In this way you have
at once a cheerful blaze, and the fire gradually eats into the solid
mass, sinking down with increasing fervor; coals drop below, and
delicate tongues of flame sport along the beautiful grain of the
forestick. There are people who kindle a fire underneath. But these
are conceited people, who are wedded to their own way. I suppose an
accomplished incendiary always starts a fire in the attic, if he can.
I am not an incendiary, but I hate bigotry. I don't call those
incendiaries very good Christians who, when they set fire to the
martyrs, touched off the fagots at the bottom, so as to make them go
slow. Besides, knowledge works down easier than it does up.
Education must proceed from the more enlightened down to the more
ignorant strata. If you want better common schools, raise the
standard of the colleges, and so on. Build your fire on top. Let
your light shine. I have seen people build a fire under a balky
horse; but he wouldn't go, he'd be a horse-martyr first. A fire
kindled under one never did him any good. Of course you can make a
fire on the hearth by kindling it underneath, but that does not make
it right. I want my hearthfire to be an emblem of the best things.