The Hills of Hingham | Page 9

the nights are dark and snowy. My mind is not, after all, much set on automobiles then; there is such a difference between a wild January night on Mullein Hill and an automobile show--or any other show. If St. Bernard of Cluny had been an American and not a monk, I think Jerusalem the Golden might very likely have been a quiet little town like Hingham, all black with a winter night and lighted for the Saint with a single open fire. Anyhow I cannot imagine the mansions of the Celestial City without fireplaces. I don't know how the equatorial people do; I have never lived on the equator, and I have no desire to--nor in any other place where it is too hot for a fireplace, or where wood is so scarce that one is obliged to substitute a gas-log. I wish I could build an open hearth into every lowly home and give every man who loves out-loud reading a copy of Lamb and sticks enough for a fire. I wish--is it futile to wish that besides the fireplace and the sticks I might add a great many more winter evenings to the round of the year? I would leave the days as they are in their beautiful and endless variety, but the long, shut-in winter evenings
"When young and old in circle About the firebrands close--"
these I would multiply, taking them away from June to give to January, could I supply the fire and the boys and the books and the reader to go with them.
And I often wonder if more men might not supply these things for themselves? There are January nights for all, and space enough outside of city and suburb for simple firesides; books enough also; yes, and readers-aloud if they are given the chance. But the boys are hard to get. They might even come girls. Well, what is the difference, anyway? Suppose mine had been dear things with ribbons in their hair--not these four, but four more? Then all the glowing circle about the fireplace had been filled, the chain complete, a link of fine gold for every link of steel! Ah! the cat hath nine lives, as Phisologus saith; but a man hath as many lives as he hath sons, with two lives besides for every daughter. So it must always seem to me when I remember the precious thing that vanished from me before I could even lay her in her mother's arms. She would have been, I think, a full head taller than the oldest boy, and wiser than all four of the boys, being a girl.
The real needs of life are few, and to be had by most men, even though they include children and an automobile. Second-hand cars are very cheap, and the world seems full of orphans--how many orphans now! It is n't a question of getting the things; the question is, What are the necessary things?
First, I say, a fireplace. A man does well to build his fireplace first instead of the garage. Better than a roof over one's head is a fire at one's feet; for what is there deadlier than the chill of a fireless house? The fireplace first, unless indeed he have the chance, as I had when a boy, to get him a pair of tongs.
The first piece of household furniture I ever purchased was a pair of old tongs. I was a lad in my teens. "Five--five--five--five--v-v-v-ve will you make it ten?" I heard the auctioneer cry as I passed the front gate. He held a pair of brass-headed hearth tongs above his head, waving them wildly at the unresponsive bidders.
"Will you make it ten?" he yelled at me as the last comer.
"Ten," I answered, a need for fire tongs, that blistering July day, suddenly overcoming me.
"And sold for ten cents to the boy in the gate," shouted the auctioneer. "Will somebody throw in the fireplace to go with them!"
I took my tongs rather sheepishly, I fear, rather helplessly, and got back through the gate, for I was on foot and several miles from home. I trudged on for home carrying those tongs with me all the way, not knowing why, not wishing to throw them into the briers for they were very old and full of story, and I--was very young and full of--I cannot tell, remembering what little boys are made of. And now here they lean against the hearth, that very pair. I packed them in the bottom of my trunk when I started for college; I saved them through the years when our open fire was a "base-burner," and then a gas-radiator in a city flat. Moved, preserved, "married" these many years, they stand at last where the boy must have dreamed them standing--that hot July day,