it was half-past ten! i had no idea it was so late! our little camp was pitched about four miles up captain’s gully, under the massive shelter of bulman’s ridge. it had been a perfect, cloudless day; all our excursions—fishing, shooting, botanizing, and the rest—had been crowned with delightful success; and after supper we sat round the great camp fire, talking. we talked, of course, of the only things ever discussed around camp fires—old times and old faces. i was struck with the number of sentences that began ‘i remember once——.’ then, one by one, the others stole away to their tents—those little white tents that had looked like stray snowflakes in a wilderness of bush whenever we caught sight of them from the hills in the daytime, yet which seemed all the world to us at night. one by one, with a ‘here’s off!’ or a ‘so long!’ the others had slipped quietly away, and the fire and i were at last left to ourselves. how still it all was! now and then i heard the queer cry of a mopoke up the gully; and once there was the swish of a bough beneath the leap of a ’possum. 173but, save for these, i could hear no sound but the subdued hissing and rumbling of the logs as they crumpled up in the fire before me. i remained for awhile, looking into the glowing embers; and there, in the dying fire, the faces of my companions all came back to me. and not theirs alone; for i saw, too, the old familiar faces of which we had been chatting, and a hundred others as well. it was then that i was startled by the ’possum in the branches overhead. i looked at my watch; it was half-past ten; and i too turned my back on the fire that had revealed so much. and i wondered, as i moved away to my tent, why, by the side of the fire, we always think of the past, dream of the past, talk of the past. why do our yesterdays all spring to new and glorious life when the flickering flames are lighting up our faces?
our camp broke up a day or two later; and all such thoughts seemed to have died with the fire that gave them birth. but, oddly enough, they returned to me this morning. for, when i arose, i was conscious of a distinct snap of winter in the atmosphere; and when i entered the study i discovered that the divinity who presides over such matters had lit the first fire of another year. i saluted it with pleasure, not merely for the sake of the comfort it promised me, but for its own sake. i greeted it as one greets an old and trusted friend. on this side 174of the world we scarcely know what winter means, and we are therefore in danger of underestimating the historic value of the fire. we can produce nothing in australia worthy of comparison with those stern winters with which northern and western writers have made us so familiar. we are accustomed to a literature which pours in upon us from high northern latitudes, and which describes, with a picturesque realism that evokes a sympathetic shiver, the glacial snowdrifts that, for weeks on end, lie deep along the hedgerows; the hapless bird that falls, frozen to death, from the leafless bough; the rabbit that perishes of slow starvation in its wretched burrow; and the fish that floats in stupor beneath the very ice that furnishes the skater’s paradise. but whilst, to us, snow and ice are things of imagination or of memory, i felt thankful this morning, as i knelt down like some old fire-worshipper and warmed my numb hands at the cheerful blaze, that this tasmanian winter of ours has just enough sting in it to preserve in me a lively appreciation of this ancient and honourable institution.
for the fireside is sanctified by a great and glorious tradition. it enshrines all that is most mystical and most wonderful in our civilization. in his pictures of the forest, jack london again and again emphasizes the magic effect of the fireside even on the creatures of the wild. when white fang, the 175wolf, saw the tongues of flame and clouds of smoke that arose from beneath the indian’s hands, he was mystified. it seemed to him a sign of some divinity in man of which he knew nothing. it drew him as by some mesmeric influence. ‘he crawled several steps towards the flame. his nose touched it.’ and when he felt the pain it seemed as if an angry deity had smitten him.
in the call of the wild, jack london returns to the same idea. buck, the great dog, was a creature of the wild, and sometimes the yearning for the wild swept over him with almost irresistible authority. what was it that kept him from bounding off into the forest and shaking the dust of civilization from his paws for ever? it was because ‘faithfulness and devotion, things born of fire and roof,’ had been developed within him. he had sprawled on the hearth before john thornton’s fire; had looked up hungrily into john thornton’s face; had learned to love his master more than life itself; and to the fireside of his master he was bound by invisible chains that he could not snap. ‘deep in the forest,’ says jack london, ‘a call was sounding, and as often as he heard this call, mysteriously thrilling and luring, he felt compelled to turn his back upon the fire and the beaten earth around it, and to plunge into the forest, and on and on, he knew not where or why; nor did he wonder where or why, the call 176sounding imperiously, deep in the forest. but as often as he gained the soft unbroken earth and the green shade, the love for john thornton drew him back to the fire again.’ the fire; it is always the fire. the fire seems, even to the brutes, to be the emblem of the genius of our humanity.
for the triumph of humanity is the creation of home; and the soul of the home is the fireside. the luxurious summer evenings, with their wide range of out-of-door allurements, tend to discount the attractions of the home, and to depreciate the value of domestic intercourse. we return from business and rush out again for recreation. but winter furnishes a salutary corrective. when the day’s work is done, and the home is once reached, everything conspires to enhance its seductive charms. outside, the dark and the cold, the bleak wind and the driving rain, threaten multiple discomforts to the gadabout who dares to venture forth; whilst within, the blazing fire, the cheerful hum of table talk, and the genial hospitalities of home make their most resistless appeal amidst the wintriest conditions. was it not for this reason that the fire came to be regarded for centuries as the natural emblem of domestic felicity? in the days before matches were invented, when the lighting of a fire was a much more laborious business than it is to-day, the first fire in the home of a newly married pair was started 177by the bearing of a burning brand from each of the homes from which bride and bridegroom came. it was intended as a kind of ritual. the communication of the flame from the old hearths which they had left to the new one which they had established was designed to symbolize the perpetuation of all that was worthiest and most sacred in the homes from which the young people had come. it was the transfer of the past—that radiant and tender past that saluted me from the glowing embers of my camp fire in the gully—to the roseate and unborn future.
but although it was in my solitude that the fire in captain’s gully spoke to me, the fire is no lover of loneliness. it is the very emblem of hospitality, and there are few graces more attractive. we boast that an englishman’s home is his castle, and we do all that legislation can accomplish to make that castle impregnable and inviolate. we close the door, and draw the blinds, and we feel that we have effectually shut the whole world out. and yet when a friend looks in, we suddenly discover that our happiness consists, not in barring and bolting the heavy front door, but in flinging it wide open. we seat him in the best chair; we bring out the best dainties from the cupboard, the best books from the shelves, and the best stories from the treasure-house of memory. the fire crackles, cheeks 178glow, and eyes sparkle as the genial conversation grows in interest and surprise. nor is the pleasure by any means the monopoly of the host; the guest shares it to the full. what is more exhilarating or satisfying than an evening spent round a good fire with a few kindred spirits in whose company one is perfectly at home? you can speak or be silent, just as the mood takes you. you have not to labour to be entertaining if you feel that you have nothing to say; nor need you struggle to restrain yourself if you feel in the humour to talk. you have not to weigh every word as you instinctively do in the presence of less familiar or less trusted companions. you eat the fruit that is handed round, or decline it, just as the whim of the moment dictates, feeling under no obligation either way. you are entirely at your ease. sometimes the one conversation holds the entire group, and the semi-circle listens, interested or amused, to the tale that one member of the cluster is telling. at other times the party automatically divides itself into knots; the gentlemen, it may be, breaking into politics or business, and the ladies comparing notes on more enticing themes. the fire blazes; the buzz of conversation rises and falls, sinks and swells. occasionally the attention is so concentrated on the subdued voice of one speaker that scarcely a sound is audible outside the door; a moment later the 179argument is so exciting, or the laughing so boisterous, that everybody seems to be shouting at the same time. the gramophone, and all such adventitious aids to the tolerable passage of a leaden evening, are never so much as thought of. even the piano is left out in the cold. every moment is crowded with the flush of unalloyed delight. and when the last guest has vanished, and the house seems silent and empty, it suddenly occurs to you that the great chief guest whom you have been entertaining, or who has been entertaining you, was the past, the radiant and glorified past. the phrase that we heard so often in captain’s gully, the ‘i remember once——,’ has been the key-note of the evening’s gossip.
for the fact is that the fireside, whether in captain’s gully in summer-time or at home in dead of winter, is a sort of magic observatory, a kind of camera-obscura. outside, the world is wrapped in impenetrable darkness. but the kindly glow of the fire stimulates the memory, spurs the imagination, and brings back all our lost loves and all our veiled landscapes in a beautified and idealized form. the lonely man sees faces in the fire; but there are other things as well. the springs and summers that haunt our fancy as we talk of them beside a roaring fire are the blithest and gayest seasons that the world has ever known. never was sky so blue, 180or earth so fair, or sun so bright, or air so sweet as the sky and the earth, the sun and the air, that we contemplate from our coign of vantage by the side of the fire. the fragrance of the hawthorn in the hedgerow; the humming of the bees along the bank; the carolling of birds in the tree-tops; the bleating of the lambs across the meadows,—these never appear so alluring as when we view them from the wonderful observatory at the fireside. dean hole tells with what sadness he used to pluck the last roses of summer. and then, he says, ‘the chill evenings come, curtains are drawn, and bright fires glow. then who is so happy as the rose-grower with the new catalogues before him?’ he sits by his fire and talks lovingly of the roses that he grew in the summer that has vanished, and his eyes light up with enthusiasm as he thinks of the still fairer blossoms of the summer that will soon be here. and so two summer-times sit by his hearth at mid-winter, and he revels in the company of each of them.
it is ever so. the crackling of the logs wakes up the slumbering past, and it all comes back to us. as soon as a man gets his feet on the fender he instinctively thinks of old times and old companions. the flames have destroyed much; but they also revive much. they bring back to us our yesterdays; they bring back, indeed, the lordly yesterdays of 181the remotest, stateliest antiquity. surely that was the idea in macaulay’s mind when he wrote ‘horatius’:
and in the nights of winter,
when the cold north winds blow,
and the long howling of the wolves
is heard amidst the snow;
when round the lonely cottage
roars loud the tempest’s din,
and the good logs of algidus
roar louder yet within;
when the oldest cask is opened,
and the largest lamp is lit;
when the chestnuts glow in the embers,
and the kid turns on the spit;
when young and old in circle
around the firebrands close;
when the girls are weaving baskets,
and the lads are shaping bows;
when the goodman mends his armour,
and trims his helmet’s plume;
when the goodwife’s shuttle merrily
goes flashing through the loom,—
with weeping and with laughter
still is the story told,
how well horatius kept the bridge
in the brave days of old.
now, when i come to think of it, is it any wonder that the days of auld lang syne, and the old familiar 182faces, should all come back in the flames? for the scientists tell me that this study-fire of mine is simply the radiance of far-back ages suddenly released for my present comfort. long before a single black-fellow prowled about these vast australian solitudes, the sun bathed this huge continent in apparently superfluous brightness. but the sun knew what it was doing. the coalbeds gathered up and stored that sunshine through centuries of centuries. the black men came; and the white men came; and here at last am i! i need that sunshine of ages long gone by. the miner digs for it; brings it to the surface; sends it to my study; and, lo, i am this very morning warming my numb fingers at its genial glow!
and so the match with which i light a fire, either in the camp away up in the bush, or in this quiet study at home, is nothing less than the wand of a magician! at the barred and bolted doors of the irrecoverable past i tap with that small wand and cry, ‘open, sesame!’ and, lo, a miracle is straightway wrought! the doors that have been closed for years, perhaps for ages, swing suddenly open, and the sunshine comes streaming out! that match liberates the imprisoned brightness. the scientists say so, and i can easily believe it. for this is the essential glory of the fireside. all the sunniest memories rush to mind as we cluster round 183the hearth. all the sunniest experiences of the dead and buried years spring to vigorous life once more. all the sunniest faces—the dear, familiar faces of the long ago—smile at us again from out the glowing embers. and perhaps—who shall say?—perhaps some thought like this haunted the minds of a prophet of the old testament and an apostle of the new when, greatly daring, they declared that ‘our god is a consuming fire!’ did they mean that, when we see him as he is, all the holiest and sweetest and most precious treasure of the past will be more our own? did they mean that in him the sunshine of all the ages will again salute us?
