It must be confessed that a wood-fire needs as much tending as a pair of
twins. To say nothing of fiery projectiles sent into the room, even by
the best wood, from the explosion of gases confined in its cells, the
brands are continually dropping down, and coals are being scattered
over the hearth. However much a careful housewife, who thinks more
of neatness than enjoyment, may dislike this, it is one of the chief
delights of a wood-fire. I would as soon have an Englishman without
side-whiskers as a fire without a big backlog; and I would rather have
no fire than one that required no tending,--one of dead wood that
could not sing again the imprisoned songs of the forest, or give out in
brilliant scintillations the sunshine it absorbed in its growth. Flame
is an ethereal sprite, and the spice of danger in it gives zest to the
care of the hearth-fire. Nothing is so beautiful as springing, changing
flame,--it was the last freak of the Gothic architecture men to
represent the fronts of elaborate edifices of stone as on fire, by
the kindling flamboyant devices. A fireplace is, besides, a private
laboratory, where one can witness the most brilliant chemical
experiments, minor conflagrations only wanting the grandeur of cities on
fire. It is a vulgar notion that a fire is only for heat. A chief value
of it is, however, to look at. It is a picture, framed between the
jambs. You have nothing on your walls, by the best masters (the poor
masters are not, however, represented), that is really so fascinating,
so spiritual. Speaking like an upholsterer, it furnishes the room.
And it is never twice the same. In this respect it is like the
landscape-view through a window, always seen in a new light, color, or
condition. The fireplace is a window into the most charming world I ever
had a glimpse of.
Yet direct heat is an agreeable sensation. I am not scientific enough
to despise it, and have no taste for a winter residence on Mount
Washington, where the thermometer cannot be kept comfortable even by
boiling. They say that they say in Boston that there is a satisfaction
in being well dressed which religion cannot give. There is certainly a
satisfaction in the direct radiance of a hickory fire which is not to be
found in the fieriest blasts of a furnace. The hot air of a furnace is
a sirocco; the heat of a wood-fire is only intense sunshine, like that
bottled in Lacrimae Christi. Besides this, the eye is delighted, the
sense of smell is regaled by the fragrant decomposition, and the ear is
pleased with the hissing, crackling, and singing,--a liberation of
so many out-door noises. Some people like the sound of bubbling in a
boiling pot, or the fizzing of a frying-spider. But there is nothing
gross in the animated crackling of sticks of wood blazing on the earth,
not even if chestnuts are roasting in the ashes. All the senses are
ministered to, and the imagination is left as free as the leaping
tongues of flame.
The attention which a wood-fire demands is one of its best
recommendations. We value little that which costs us no trouble to
maintain. If we had to keep the sun kindled up and going by private
corporate action, or act of Congress, and to be taxed for the support of
customs officers of solar heat, we should prize it more than we do. Not
that I should like to look upon the sun as a job, and have the proper
regulation of its temperature get into politics, where we already have
so much combustible stuff; but we take it quite too much as a matter
of course, and, having it free, do not reckon it among the reasons for
gratitude. Many people shut it out of their houses as if it were an
enemy, watch its descent upon the carpet as if it were only a thief of
color, and plant trees to shut it away from the mouldering house. All
the animals know better than this, as well as the more simple races of
men; the old women of the southern Italian coasts sit all day in the sun
and ply the distaff, as grateful as the sociable hens on the south side
of a New England barn; the slow tortoise likes to take the sun upon his
sloping back, soaking in color that shall make him immortal when the
imperishable part of him is cut up into shell ornaments. The capacity
of a cat to absorb sunshine is only equaled by that of an Arab or an
Ethiopian. They are not afraid of injuring their complexions.
White must be the color of civilization; it has so many natural
disadvantages. But this is politics. I was about to say that, however it
may be with sunshine, one is always grateful for his wood-fire, because
he does not maintain it without some cost.
Yet I cannot but confess to a difference between sunlight and the light
of a wood-fire. The sunshine is entirely untamed. Where it rages most
freely it tends to evoke the brilliancy rather than the harmonious
satisfactions of nature. The monstrous growths and the flaming colors
of the tropics contrast with our more subdued loveliness of foliage and
bloom. The birds of the middle region dazzle with their contrasts of
plumage, and their voices are for screaming rather than singing. I
presume the new experiments in sound would project a macaw's voice
in very tangled and inharmonious lines of light. I suspect that the
fiercest sunlight puts people, as well as animals and vegetables, on
extremes in all ways. A wood-fire on the hearth is a kindler of the
domestic virtues. It brings in cheerfulness, and a family center, and,
besides, it is artistic. I should like to know if an artist could ever
represent on canvas a happy family gathered round a hole in the floor
called a register. Given a fireplace, and a tolerable artist could
almost create a pleasant family round it. But what could he conjure out
of a register? If there was any virtue among our ancestors,--and they
labored under a great many disadvantages, and had few of the aids which
we have to excellence of life,--I am convinced they drew it mostly from
the fireside. If it was difficult to read the eleven commandments by the
light of a pine-knot, it was not difficult to get the sweet spirit
of them from the countenance of the serene mother knitting in the
chimney-corner.