G LADY. What vexes me most is, that women, married women, have
so easily consented to give up open fires in their houses.

HERBERT. They dislike the dust and the bother. I think that women rather
like the confined furnace heat.

THE FIRE-TENDER. Nonsense; it is their angelic virtue of submission. We
wouldn't be hired to stay all-day in the houses we build.

THE YOUNG LADY. That has a very chivalrous sound, but I know there will
be no reformation until women rebel and demand everywhere the open fire.

HERBERT. They are just now rebelling about something else; it seems to
me yours is a sort of counter-movement, a fire in the rear.

THE MISTRESS. I'll join that movement. The time has come when woman must
strike for her altars and her fires.

HERBERT. Hear, hear!

THE MISTRESS. Thank you, Herbert. I applauded you once, when you
declaimed that years ago in the old Academy. I remember how eloquently
you did it.

HERBERT. Yes, I was once a spouting idiot.

Just then the door-bell rang, and company came in. And the company
brought in a new atmosphere, as company always does, something of the
disturbance of out-doors, and a good deal of its healthy cheer. The
direct news that the thermometer was approaching zero, with a hopeful
prospect of going below it, increased to liveliness our satisfaction in
the fire. When the cider was heated in the brown stone pitcher, there
was difference of opinion whether there should be toast in it; some
were for toast, because that was the old-fashioned way, and others were
against it, "because it does not taste good" in cider. Herbert said
there, was very little respect left for our forefathers.

More wood was put on, and the flame danced in a hundred fantastic
shapes. The snow had ceased to fall, and the moonlight lay in silvery
patches among the trees in the ravine. The conversation became worldly.

THIRD STUDY

I

Herbert said, as we sat by the fire one night, that he wished he had
turned his attention to writing poetry like Tennyson's.

The remark was not whimsical, but satirical. Tennyson is a man of
talent, who happened to strike a lucky vein, which he has worked with
cleverness. The adventurer with a pickaxe in Washoe may happen upon like
good fortune. The world is full of poetry as the earth is of "pay-dirt;"
one only needs to know how to "strike" it. An able man can make himself
almost anything that he will. It is melancholy to think how many epic
poets have