We give ourselves to the rooms in which we live and the tools with which we work PAGE facing page 268 Like a child let loose from city squares, runs through meadows white with daisies facing page 275 THE FIRE LIGHTED HE lighting of the fire in my study is an event of importance in the calendar of the domestic year; it marks the close of one season, and announces the advent of another. There is always a touch of pathos in the last warm. autumnal days, that makes the cordial acceptance of winter a kind of infidelity to the months that have lavished their gifts of life and beauty at our threshold. I am quite willing to shiver at my writing-table on sharp autumnal mornings in order that the final act of separation from summer may be postponed a little. This year we have been more than ever reluctant to sever the last tie with a season which has be friended us as none of its predecessors has ever done, and it was not until a keen northwester shook the house yesterday that we prepared the hearth for its annual fire. The day broke cold and gray, with an unmistakable aspect of winter in the sky and upon the fields; the little landlocked harbour looked bleak and desolate, and the wide expanse of water beyond was dark, cold, and threatening. I found my study cheerless and unfamiliar; it was deserted by one season, and the next had possession of it. It was a barren day; thought and feeling were both congealed, and refused to flow, and even the faithful not yet taken pen, that has patiently traversed so many sheets of blank paper, stumbled and halted. After a fruit less struggle with myself and my environment, I yielded to the general depression and closed my portfolio. Α long walk brought me into harmony with nature, and 2 when I returned I was not sorry to see that the andirons had been heaped with wood in my absence, and all things made ready for lighting the fire. We lingered long at the dinner-table that evening, and when we left it a common impulse seemed to lead us into the study. Rosalind always lights the fire, and one of the pleasant impressions of the annual ceremonial is the glow of the first blaze upon her fair face and waving hair. Two little heads mingled their wealth of golden tresses at one end of the rug, intent upon the quick, mysterious contagion of flame which never fails to fill them with wonder; while in the background I watched the picture, so soon to take on a new and subtle beauty, with curiously mixed regret and anticipation. I take out my watch in unconscious recognition of the importance of an event which marks the autumnal equinox in the household calendar. At the same moment a little puff of smoke announces that the momentous act has been performed; all eyes are fixed on the fireplace, and every swift advance of flame, creeping silently from stick to stick until the whole mass is wrapped in fire, is noted with deepening satisfaction. A genial warmth begins to pervade the room, and the soft glow falls first on the little group, and then passes on to touch the pictures and the rows of books with its luminous and transfiguring cheer. I am suddenly conscious that a new spirit has taken possession of the room, liberated no doubt by the curling flames that are now singing among the sticks, and hinting that it is winter, after all, which forces from summer her last and rarest charm, her deepest and most spiritual truth. That which has vanished to the eye lives in the thought, and takes on its most elusive and most abiding beauty. yet its This first lighting of the fire in my study is, indeed, a brief transfiguration of life; it discloses to me anew the very soul of nature, it reveals the thought that runs. through literature, it discovers the heart of my hope and aspiration. I catch in this transient splendour a vision of the deepest meaning which life and art have for me. The glow rests first upon those faces, eagerly searching the depths of the |