Page images
PDF
EPUB
[graphic][subsumed][merged small]

THE OPEN WOOD FIRE.

"Mankind has never willingly relinquished the camp-fire. It is not preference, but necessity, that has driven him indoors. Even there he carried and rekindled its embers, and it became the hearth-fire: a flame, sister to the flame of love. So much he rescued from the loss of Paradise." -William Cunningham Gray.

"Then leave that buzzing hive, the city mart;

Come, while my gnarl'd oaks hold their wreath of snows,
Come to a country hearth, and let your heart-

Mellowed by midnight, while the back-log glows-
Touch on the themes most dear."

[graphic]

TH

-Lloyd Mifflin.

HERE is nothing like a wood fire. The blaze crackles out good cheer in truly royal fashion. It is one of the real privileges of country life, a rightly venerated luxury. How clean the wood fire is, and how fragrant and suggestive the perfume of the smoke! There is practically no soot, and the ashes are easily taken away. It's like having a regular outdoor fire in the house, and gives us a chance to live as we ought to, in an atmosphere of mingled coziness and native enjoyment. The fireplace itself is four feet wide and nearly three deep, and the entrance is three feet high and is slightly arched. That will hold a good-sized log, you see, and many a heavy one have I hoisted and flung into it, in constructing the fire, across the dogs.

THE OLD SUGAR KETTLE.

The floor is of oak, and has never been renewed, and the hearth is made of large bricks. We can see, in under the edges of the carpet, the ends of the old oak planks, still sound, next to the hearth. A couple of andirons, a foot or so apart, stretch out toward the back of the chimney. The slender iron rods that span the hearth, as parallel supports for the wood, are each elevated a few inches at the rear by a small leg, or pin, which is simply a bent-over extension of the horizontal cross-piece itself; and they are raised at the front to an equal height by two side-projecting feet, or stems, apiece, attached to the framework. Above these fore bases are two large metal uprights, which serve to keep the wood from spreading too far, and to uphold the backlog, should it ever fall forward. These erect and prominent standards are generally of brass (or, rarely, of hand-forged bronze), formed into bosses, or scrollwork, or other studded and armor-like devices, which are sometimes very curiously artistic and ornamental; and, when well burnished, they reflect in a dancing flicker the light of the fire. In pioneer days they were used to sustain the ends of the spits in cooking, and answered the purpose as a sort of trevet. Those in front of the old fireplace before us date from close to the eighteenth century, and are composed of a series of brass knobs one above another, and the braces beneath them are also of brass. The fire irons, too, are often wrought in relief, with very attractive designs in the antique.

It is always interesting to observe the different sizes and kinds of wood thrown on a fire in the making of it. There are few pleasures equal to the building

of one. First, of course, comes the huge backlog itself, perhaps half a log of sugar maple, preferably green, pounded and riven in two with maul and wedges, and with moss, and shreds of bark, and lichens still hanging to it; and now slung, back of the andirons and propped up by them, against the chimney, as the reflector and mainstay of the fire and the protection of the chimney walls. Then a good-sized forestick will be placed down in front, close to the uprights and on the transverse shafts; and perhaps that is part of an old dead oak, cut and split up now into wood. A few dry beech leaves, or bean pods, or shucks, may be used as kindlings to start a blaze with, down in between the irons, among the ashes, and set afire by a few live coals raked and poked out from within the embers; and on top of these we shall put a handful of shavings, or some chips, or fragments of an old board or shingle, or a few picked-up splinters from a dilapidated fence rail; while, still further, upon these materials, and resting on the bars, between the forestick and the backlog, we shall lay several smaller pieces of wood similar to the forestick-one, say, of ash, another of beech, a stick or two pruned from the limb of an apple-tree, and some dead leafy twigs of an oak,-and in and out betwixt them all we shall insert some long dry slivers of hickory bark, with perhaps a thick roll from the rind of a beech left standing up against the backlog, or above it, surmounting the whole:-and then we shall have a fire worthy the name! We shall enjoy it, then, through the day, and with our fire shovel at night we shall cover the remaining coals, and the ashes will keep the embers until the morning.

« PreviousContinue »