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.