k butternuts on. Over
the fire swings an iron crane, with a row of pot-hooks of all lengths
hanging from it. It swings out when the housewife wants to hang on
the tea-kettle, and it is strong enough to support a row of pots, or a
mammoth caldron kettle on occasion. What a jolly sight is this fireplace
when the pots and kettles in a row are all boiling and bubbling over
the flame, and a roasting spit is turning in front! It makes a person
as hungry as one of Scott's novels. But the brilliant sight is in the
frosty morning, about daylight, when the fire is made. The coals are
raked open, the split sticks are piled up in openwork criss-crossing, as
high as the crane; and when the flame catches hold and roars up through
the interstices, it is like an out-of-door bonfire. Wood enough is
consumed in that morning sacrifice to cook the food of a Parisian family
for a year. How it roars up the wide chimney, sending into the air the
signal smoke and sparks which announce to the farming neighbors another
day cheerfully begun! The sleepiest boy in the world would get up in his
red flannel nightgown to see such a fire lighted, even if he dropped
to sleep again in his chair before the ruddy blaze. Then it is that the
house, which has shrunk and creaked all night in the pinching cold of
winter, begins to glow again and come to life. The thick frost melts
little by little on the small window-panes, and it is seen that the gray
dawn is breaking over the leagues of pallid snow. It is time to blow out
the candle, which has lost all its cheerfulness in the light of day. The
morning romance is over; the family is astir; and member after member
appears with the morning yawn, to stand before the crackling, fierce
conflagration. The daily round begins. The most hateful employment ever
invented for mortal man presents itself: the "chores" are to be done.
The boy who expects every morning to open into a new world finds that
to-day is like yesterday, but he believes to-morrow will be different.
And yet enough for him, for the day, is the wading in the snowdrifts, or
the sliding on the diamond-sparkling crust. Happy, too, is he, when the
storm rages, and the snow is piled high against the windows, if he can
sit in the warm chimney-corner and read about Burgoyne, and General
Fraser, and Miss McCrea, midwinter marches through the wilderness,
surprises of wigwams, and the stirring ballad, say, of the Battle of the
Kegs:--

"Come, gallants, attend