THE FIRE IN THE WOODS.
When Rollo and Jonas reached home the next day, Rollo gave Dorothy an
account of the conflagration which they had witnessed in the city.
Dorothy did not appear quite so much interested in his narrative as
Rollo had expected. There are, in fact, a great many scenes which it is
very interesting to witness, but which it is very uninteresting to hear
described. This is a distinction which a great many travellers, older
and more experienced than Rollo, are apt to forget. Or rather it is one
that they do not understand at all. They attempt to describe to their
friends scenes of grandeur or sublimity which impressed their minds very
strongly when they witnessed them, and are surprised to find that they
cannot make a similar impression upon others by means of the
description.
Besides, Rollo’s account was confused and indistinct. It is possible to
create a strong impression upon the mind by a description of a storm, or
of a conflagration, or of any other grand scene. But, then, the
description must be given skilfully. It must be clear and distinct, and
the several circumstances which contributed most to the production of
the general effect, must be presented fully to the mind, and in a
regular and proper manner. This Rollo failed to do. He was not
experienced in the description of complicated scenes.
Accordingly, when he got through with his narrative, and perceived that
Dorothy did not enter at all into the enthusiasm with which he related
it, he paused a moment, and then said,—
“Did you ever see a fire in a great city, Dorothy?”
“No,” said Dorothy.
“Well, it is a very grand sight, I can assure you,” said Rollo. “I don’t
believe _you_ ever saw such a grand sight, in your life.”
“Yes, I have,” said Dorothy.
“What?” asked Rollo.
“A fire in the woods,” replied Dorothy.
“O Dorothy!” said Rollo; “a fire in the woods is nothing at all,
compared to a fire in a city. I know, because Jonas and I have built
fires in the woods a hundred times.”
“O, I don’t mean your little bonfires,” replied Dorothy. “I mean great
fires, when the woods are burning themselves, for miles and miles all
around.”
“Do the woods get on fire like that?” asked Rollo.
“Yes,” replied Dorothy. “I remember one fire, in the woods, when I was a
little girl, that came very near burning my father’s house. I was quite
a little girl.”
“How old?” asked Rollo.
“About seven years,” said Dorothy. “It was when my father lived in his
log-house in the square opening.”
“What do you mean by that?” asked Rollo.
“Why, my father made his cut-down square. There were just five acres.”
“What is a cut-down?” asked Rollo.
“The piece where he cut down the trees,” said Dorothy, “to make a
clearing. First they fall the trees, and then it is called a _cut-down_.
They let the trees lie all summer, until they get perfectly dry, and
then they set them on fire, and burn them. When my father had got his
five-acre piece cleared, he built a log-house upon it, and there we
lived. The opening was full of stumps, and the woods were all around it,
the stems of the trees standing up thick and close together, like a
wall. We could not see out of the opening any where, except a little way
down the road.”
“And did you live there all alone?” asked Rollo.
“O, no,” said Dorothy; “there were my father and mother, and my brother;
only my father and brother used to be away almost all the time, at
work.”
“Well,” said Rollo, “tell me about the fire.”
“Why, the first that we knew of it, was, that I saw one day a great
white smoke rolling up over the tops of the trees, to the north of our
house. I asked my mother to come and look at it, and she did. She said
she guessed that John Williams was burning off his piece.”
“Who was John Williams?” asked Rollo.
“Why, he was one of our neighbors. He lived about two miles off, and had
been falling a piece of woods that spring, for a crop of wheat.
“I watched the smoke for some time,” continued Dorothy, “and at length
it grew smaller and smaller, and finally I could see nothing but a haze.
But, that night, I went out, about nine o’clock, to see if my chickens
were all safe,—for there were some foxes about at that time,—and I saw
that the sky looked red in that direction; so I knew that the fire had
not all gone out.”
“Was that the time,” interrupted Rollo, “when you had your hen-coop in a
stump?”
“Why? did I ever tell you about that?” asked Dorothy.
“Yes,” replied Rollo, “you told me about your hen’s laying her eggs in
an old hollow stump; and then your brother made a coop there, for the
chickens.”
“Yes,” rejoined Dorothy, “that was at the same time. The next morning, I
saw the smoke coming up again. It was not so thick as it had been the
day before, when the fire first began to burn; but it seemed to spread
over a larger space.”
“Had the fire got into the woods?” asked Rollo.
“Yes,” replied Dorothy. “My father told us, when he got home that day to
dinner, that John Williams had let his fire get away from him, and that
it had got into a fine growth of sugar maples, and was making sad work.
“My mother asked him if there was not any danger that it would get over
to our land; but my father said no, not unless the wind should come in
strong from the northward. But he said he thought there would be a
shower that afternoon, and that would put it out.”
“And was there a shower?” asked Rollo.
“Yes,” replied Dorothy; “only the cloud brought more wind than rain, and
so it fanned up the fire more than it extinguished it. The rain, in
fact, only sprinkled the tops of the trees, leaving all the dry logs,
stumps, leaves, and branches, which lay about upon the ground, as dry as
ever. After the shower, there was a good fresh breeze all the evening;
and about nine o’clock that evening, when we went to bed, the whole sky
in that quarter was of a burning red, as if the heavens were on fire.”
“I should have thought you would have been afraid to go to bed,” said
Rollo.
“No,” said Dorothy; “for the wind went down about nine o’clock, and,
though the fire looked very bright, my father said it would not spread
any more.”
“How did it look the next morning?” asked Rollo.
“It only looked smoky,” replied Dorothy. “In fact, we never could see
any light in the daytime; nothing but smoke. When there was a wind, the
smoke increased; and then, if night came on, the sky looked bright and
glowing; but if there was not any wind, the fire seemed to die away.
Once I thought it was all out.”
“And wasn’t it?” asked Rollo.
“No,” replied Dorothy; “my father said that nothing but a good rain
would put it out.”
“Why did not your father go,” asked Rollo, “and put it out with some
buckets of water?”
“Buckets of water, child!” said Dorothy; “do you suppose that you can
put out a fire in the woods with buckets of water?”
“Why, no,” said Rollo, “I suppose not. But they could put it out with
such engines as we saw in the city; I know they could.”
“You know a great many things that I don’t,” said Dorothy. “However, we
did not have any engines, and so there was nothing to do but to wait for
rain. But it happened to be a dry time just then, and there was not any
rain for a week; and so the fire continued, sometimes burning up bright,
and sometimes dying away, but all the time drawing gradually nearer to
our house.
“At last, one night it got so near that my father said that he did not
know but that he ought to sit up and keep watch; but the wind shifted
before bedtime, and blew it off in another direction, and so he went to
bed.
“But about midnight I heard a great noise, which waked me up. I opened
my eyes, and looked around, and I saw a great light shining through the
cracks.”
“What cracks?” asked Rollo.
“Why, the cracks between the slabs.”
“Where were the slabs?” asked Rollo.
“Why, the upper part of the house was made of slabs, and there were
cracks between them, where I could see out.”
“I should think the wind and rain would come in,” said Rollo.
“Yes,” replied Dorothy; “so they did, when it was stormy, but not enough
to do any harm, because I could always move my bed away from the side
where the wind blew; only in the winter the snow used to blow away in to
my bed, wherever I put it. But that did not do any harm, because the
snow would shake all off again.”
“Was not there any window in your chamber?” asked Rollo.
“Why, it was not a chamber exactly,” replied Dorothy; “we called it a
_loft_. There was a window left in one end, but that was fastened up by
a board. So I could only see the lights through the cracks.”
“What was the noise that you heard?” asked Rollo.
“It was the noise that my father made calling up my brother, and running
out. Then, besides, there was a great roaring and crackling of the
flames. I got up, and dressed myself, and ran down stairs, and I found
the woods all on fire close by our house.”
“Why, I thought your house was in the middle of the opening,” said
Rollo.
“No,” replied Dorothy; “it was upon one side of the opening,—pretty near
the woods. There was a brush fence running along at the edge of the
woods, and a log fence leading from the brush fence to our barnyard. The
brush fence was all on fire, and it was blazing up very high, and beyond
it, in the woods, the ground was covered in every direction with heaps
of logs, and branches, and old trees, all on fire, and burning
furiously. The air was full of smoke and sparks, and the wind was
driving them directly towards our house and barn.
“Just then I heard behind me a great crackling, which burst out very
loud and suddenly. I looked to see what it was, and I found that the
fire had got into the top of a great hemlock-tree, and it was blazing
away from the top to the bottom of it. But I had no time to stand
looking at it, for my father told me to go and get some water at the
spring, and then to watch, and look all about the yard, and if I saw the
fire catching any where to put it out.”
“Why did not he do that himself?” asked Rollo.
“O, he had to go,” replied Dorothy, “and pull the log fence to pieces;
for the fire was creeping along the log fence towards our barn. The barn
was full of hay, which my father had got in only a few weeks before, and
there was a great haystack in the barnyard besides; and if these should
get on fire, the house would probably go too, for the house was very
near.”
“And did they get on fire?” asked Rollo.
“No,” replied Dorothy; “my father pulled away the log fence, and then
the fire could not get to the house and barn in any way except by sparks
through the air. And to keep the sparks from catching on the roof, he
got up upon the barn, and my brother got upon the house; and then my
mother brought them water from the spring. So they wet the roofs all
over. Once a spark lighted on the haystack, and set it on fire; but my
father saw it smoking, and he came down quick from the barn, and carried
the ladder to the haystack, and climbed up, and put it out with his pail
of water. There was another spark, too, which caught upon the chips in
the yard, near the woodpile; and _I_ put that out.”
“How long did you have to stay?” asked Rollo.
“O, till the morning,” said Dorothy, “and then the wind died all away.
And in the course of that day, there came on a rain storm, and it put
the fires out. But when I first came out to see it that night, I can
tell you the sight was very terrible.”
“Yes,” said Rollo. “I think it must have been as terrible as the fire in
the city.”
“It was very lonesome too,” said Dorothy; “only us four fighting such a
great fire.”
“What should you have done,” asked Rollo, “if your house had taken fire,
and got burned down?”
“O, my father would have built us a camp, and we should have lived in
that until he could have time to build us another house. But then I
don’t know what we should have done for hay all the next winter for our
oxen and cows. Father was much more afraid for the barn than for the
house.”
“O Dorothy!” said Rollo. “Why, there was all the furniture in the house,
and that would have been burned up.”
“No,” replied Dorothy, “there was not much furniture; and what there was
we could have got out while the house was burning. The hay was the great
thing—the winter’s stock of hay.”
And thus ended Dorothy’s account of the fire in the woods.
QUESTIONS.
To whom did Rollo attempt to describe the fire which he had
witnessed in the city? How did he succeed in the description? What
was the difficulty? What scene did Dorothy attempt to describe to
Rollo? What is a _cut-down_? In what sort of a place did her father
live when the fire in the woods occurred? How did the fire first
take? What was its progress the first day? What appearances did it
present to Dorothy? How did they hope that it would be extinguished?
Describe what took place on the night when the fire reached the
clearing.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
1. Silently corrected typographical errors and variations in spelling.
2. Archaic, non-standard, and uncertain spellings retained as printed.
3. Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.
End of Project Gutenberg's Rollo's Philosophy [Fire], by Jacob Abbott