of their easy moments.

Finally the same impersonal voice out of the dark uttered another
sentence: "Might row ye 'cross if ye've _got_ to go to-night."

"How much?" said Jonathan.

"Guess it's wuth a dollar. Mean night to be out there."

We had, between us, forty-seven cents and three street-car tickets, good
in the opposite town. All this we meekly offered him, and in the pause
that followed I added desperately, "And we can each take an oar and
help."

"Wall-- I'll take ye."

It seemed to me that the voice suggested an accompanying grin, but I had
no proof.

And so we got across. We never saw the face of our boatman, but on the
other side we felt for his hand and emptied our pockets into
it--nickels and dimes and pennies, and the three car tickets; but as we
were turning to grope our way up the dock the voice said, "Here--ye'll
need two of them tickets to git home with. I do' want 'um."

Now already it must be evident to any one that my remark to Jonathan,
though perhaps ill-timed, embodied a profound and cheering truth. The
more uncomfortable you are, the more desperate your situation, the
better the reminiscences you are storing up to be enjoyed before the
fire.

Yes, there is nothing like firelight for reminiscences. By the clear
light of morning--say ten o'clock--I might be forced to admit that life
has had its humdrum and unpleasant aspects, but in the evening, with the
candles lighted and the fire glowing and flickering, I will allow no
such thing. The firelight somehow lights up all the lovely bits, and
about the unlovely ones it throws a thick mantle of shadow, like the
shadows in the corners of the room behind us. Nor does the firelight
magic end here. Not only does it play about the fair hours of our past,
making them fairer, it also vaguely multiplies them, so that for one
real occurrence we see many. It is like standing between opposing
mirrors: looking into either, one sees a receding series of reflections,
unending as Banquo's royal line.

Thus, once last winter Jonathan and I spent a long evening reading aloud
a tale of the "Earthly Paradise." Once last summer we sat alone before
the embers and quietly talked. Once and only once. Yet firelit memory is
already laying her touch upon those hours. Already, though my diary
tells me they stood alone, I am persuaded that they were many. I look
back over a retrospect of many long winter evenings, in whose cozy light
I see again the ringed smoke of