valent of flesh and blood and spirit, I noticed that the little
folks greeted me with an air of subdued decorum as though fresh from a
funeral. There were no caperings, no flauntings, no cavortings. Each
young minx had on her Sunday go-to-meeting air, and the boy stood with
his hat on one side of his head, as though for a sixpence he would
fight all creation. Wondering at the change, I happened to look toward
the house, and there it stood in the light of the fading day, like a
poor old woman without a veil to hide her wrinkles! Every window
looked ashamed of itself, and on the ground lay the dear old vine,
prone as a lost reputation.

"I never see such an ill-fired crank in all the days of my life!"
remarked the painter to the new girl, after I had held a brief but
spirited interview with him over the garden fence; "blanked if she
didn't cry because her vine was down!"

XLVII.

THE OLD SITTING-ROOM STOVE.

What is there within the home, during the winter season at least, that
seems so thoroughly to constitute the soul of home as the family-room
stove? It can never be replaced by that ugly hole in the floor which
floods our rooms with furnace heat, with no glow of cheerful firelight,
no flicker of flame or changeful play of shadow out of which to weave
fantastic dreams and fancies. I once watched the dying out of one of
these fires in a great base burner, around which for years a large and
loving family had gathered. The furniture of the home had all been
sold, and the family was about to scatter. The trunks were packed and
gone, the last article removed from the place, and the old stove was
left to burn out its fire at the last, that it, too, might be removed
next morning. And after the evening had come and was far spent, the
last evening wherein any right should remain to us to enter the old
home as its owners and occupants, I took my pass-key and slipped over
from the neighbor's for my final good-bye to the dear old home. The
fire-light, like the glance of a reproachful eye, shone upon me through
the gloom of the deserted parlor. "Have I not warmed you and comforted
you and cheered you with my genial glow?" a voice seemed to say; "and
now you have come to see me die! I am the vital spirit of your home.
I am dying, and nothing can ever reanimate these deserted rooms again
with the dear, the beautiful past."

Like the eye of one who is going down to death, the firelight faded and
finally went out