fire, that are the very heart of my heart; it rests next upon the books in which the thoughts of the great teachers and the dreams of the great artists remain indestructible; it steals last through the windows, and, even in the night, seems to bathe the far-reaching landscape in a passing glory. Like the spirit which Faust summoned into his study, it reveals to me "A weaving, flowing

Life, all glowing."

After a time the golden heads begin to nod, and the dreams which they have seen in the glowing coals and the dancing flames begin to mingle with the dreams. which sleep weaves with such careless, audacious fingers over the unconscious. hours. The good-nights are soon said, and the little feet, already overtaken with drowsiness, make uncertain sounds on the stairs as they take up their journey to slumberland. Rosalind returns in a moment, and draws her easy-chair before the fire, with some fragile apology for occupation in her hands. The lamp has not been lighted, and neither of us seems

to note the absence of its friendly flame. The book that we have been reading aloud. by turns lies unopened, and the stream of talk that generally touches the events of the day in little eddies and then flows on to deeper themes is lost in a silence which neither is willing to break, because it is so much fuller of meaning than any words. could be. Like the ancient river of Elis, thought flows on underground, and is perhaps all the deeper and sweeter because it does not flash into speech.

For a long time I do nothing but dream, and dreams are by no means unprofitable to those whose waking hours are given to honest work; dreams are not without meaning, for they are combined of memory and prophecy so subtly that no chemistry of philosophy has yet been able to separate them into their component parts. In his dreams a thoughtful man sees both his past and his future pass before him in the order of their real sequence; there are the memories, not so much of his acts as of the purposes that were behind them, and there are the aspirations and hopes with which he unconsciously fills the years

to come. A bad man cannot face an open fire with comfort, and he must be a man of rare fidelity of purpose and achievement to whom its searching light does not bring some revelations of himself which he would rather have hidden under the ashes of the past.

While I was meditating on the moral uses of a fire on the hearth, Rosalind put on a fresh stick, and stirred the half-burned wood with an energy that raised a little shower of sparks. The tongues of flame began to circle about the hickory, eager, apparently, to find the responsive glow sleeping in its sound and reticent heart. I recalled the strip of woodland from which it was cut, and like a vision I saw once more the summer skies and heard the summer birds.

The seasons are so linked together in the procession of the year that they are never out of sight of each other. Even now, as I step to the window, and look upon the bleak landscape under the cold light of the wintry stars, I see just beyond the retreating splendour of autumn; I hear at intervals the choirs of summer chanting to the sun their endless adoration;