belly; and by this means the pike will be kept unbroken and
complete. Then to the sauce which was within and also that sauce
in the pan you are to add a fit quantity of the best butter and to
squeeze the juice of three or four oranges; lastly you may either
put into the pike with the oysters two cloves of garlic and take
it whole out when the pike is cut off the spit; or to give the
sauce a haut-gout, let the dish into which you let fall the pike
be rubbed with it. The using or not of this garlic is left to your
discretion."

Surely the pike is the king of fishes when he is cooked in that
fashion, and I doubt not a pond pickerel thus served becomes at
least a prince. "This dish of meat," says Walton, "is too good for
any but anglers or very honest men." I am sure it is none too good
for pickerel fishermen, and when I think of it I do not wonder
that they are fat.

CHAPTER XXVI

YULE FIRES

The Peace of the Gods which our Aryan forbears knew descended at
Yuletide hovers near always as we watch the Yule log, whether in
the keen air under the stars, or in the tapestried shelter about
the carefully fended hearth. Man loves warmth, but he worships
flame, as he always has since he first saw it fall from heaven,
though few of us now make our prayer to it. Its flicker in the
night will draw us far; nor are we alone in this, for all the wild
things of the wood come as well and toss back its flare from eyes
wide with wonder. As they stand at gaze before it, unwinking, so
do we, letting its wordless message touch the primal fonts of
peace. Around the camp-fire, whether without or within, all men
are brothers and the breaking of bread and the tasting of salt are
but the more formal symbols of fellowship. Man has made God in
many images besides his own, but none has found a finer symbolism
than the ancient Persians, who saw in flame the most ethereal
expression of beneficence and purity. The race has grown older now
and we strive to outgrow what we call childish things, yet we get
new strength for dwelling in our higher levels of mature thought
by dropping back now and then to the primitive customs and
touching with smiling reverence the ancient forms of expression.
Here in America is the smelting pot of nations and we are uniting
once more in one race the scattered children of the Aryan stack.
Each child brings as play what was once worship--Saxon, Celtic,
Greek or Latin, all uniting again in the Christmas celebrati