The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1879-09-26
The First Fire.

Nobody ever feels that summer is quite long
enough, that it is quite time for it when the
early dark draws down and cuts short the once
long day; and when the cool autumn dusk ap-
pears, most of us can sympathize with those
who speak of heaven under no other name
than that of the Summer-Land. For whatever
pleasures of its own there may be in the COM
ing Imprisonment of winter, they are still, in
strong measure, the pleasures of imprisonment,
while summer, on the other hand, is one long
freedom. One hardly tires of the large out
door life, in its infinite variety, the liberty of
costume, the abounding verdure and bloom,
the unrestricted enjoyment of breeze and birds
and stars of the warm nearness and friendli
ness of the moon in opposition to its wintry
cold remoteness; of the water life in skiffs and
yachts, in the surf and ON lily ponds-of all the
prodigality of air and sunshine. And who in
all the myriads of human oeings, has ever pic
tured heaven as any place of rugs and lamps
and fires, or as anything but a land of ever
lasting summer?
We make the most of winter; we are happy
in it: we see an immenSity of beauty IN its
vivid contrasts of sparkling snow and azure, its
web-like tracery OF bare boughs and purple
sprays, its froSt-ferns on the frozen panes, its
ice blocks riven by restless tides, its white
whirl of storms, and we think of the round
earth then as winged dazzle among the stars
But when we have admired our most, we can
never make any idealization of it into a heav
enly state; but the majority of us, on the con-
trary, agree with Dante's ideas in making
snow and freezing blasts the inner circle and
pivotal point of the last place of punishment.
Yet for all that, what singular charm there
is about the first fire of wood laid the hearth,
herald as it is of tho cold imprisonment, laid
there not any more for its heat than for its
necromantc power of dispelling gloom when
sion begins to overcome ourselves. How we
welcome it, as if it were an old friend long
gone and Just returned! How we gather
about it and rejoice in it! How late we linger
about it, how we open our hearts over it, as If
thoughts and feelings were thawed out by its
genial spell! and how heedlessly we assist as
its sacrificial flames wallow up the chimney, at
at the funeral rites of summer.
Still, after all, that first fire, tumbling wave
over wave up and out into the upper darkness,
is the concentrated spice and sweetness OF
what countless summers! What years of sun
shine and dew have gone into the growth OF
the wood whose embers crumble from the an
dirons as we bend over them! The spirit and
being of how many mornings of brightness are
condensed there in stem and branchi of what
moon-lighted evenings! What red sunrises
have glistened in the dark dew that fed it
What bird song has measured the rhythm of
its increased what gentle evening winds have
swayed it! what storms have bowed and bent
it, And as it burns before u.s. and drops away
into white ashes, whato apprehension and
memory of all this sparkle in every fresh
burst of the flame, in every dying coal, and
diffuse themselves about us, and make that
first little autumn fire to us the expression and
ideal embodiment of perpetual summer!-Har-