mer before the fire luxuriates in the thought
that his help is not needed.

The talk on philosophy and religion does not make the host forget
to warm sheets and blankets and put hot bricks in the beds to insure
against the fast-gathering cold.

The firelight flickers on the bark-covered rafters, lighting up the
yellow-birch partition between living-room and bedroom downstairs, and
plays upon the rustic stairway that leads to the two rooms overhead, as
we sit before the hearth in quiet talk. Outside the moonlight floods
the great open space around the cabin, revealing outlines of the rocky
inclosure. No sounds in all that stillness without, and within only the
low voices of the friends, and the singing logs.

Mr. Burroughs tells of his visit, in October, to the graves of his
maternal grandparents:--

"They died in 1854, my first season away from home, and there they have
lain for fifty-seven years, and I had never been to their graves! I'm
glad I went; it made them live again for me. How plainly I could see the
little man in his blue coat with brass buttons, with his decidedly Irish
features! And Grandmother, a stout woman, with quaint, homely ways. The
moss is on their gravestones now, and two evergreen trees wax strong
above them. I found an indigo-bird had built her nest above their
graves. I broke off the branch and brought it home."

"There! get up and use that water before it freezes over," the host
calls out the next morning, as, mounting the stairs, he places a pitcher
of hot water by the door. It is bitter cold, one's fingers ache, and one
wonders if, after all, it is so much fun to live in a cabin in the woods
in the dead of winter. But a crackling fire below and savory smells of
bacon and coffee reconcile one, and the day begins right merrily.

And what a dinner the author sets before us! what fun to see him prepare
it, discussing meanwhile the glory that was Greece and the grandeur
that was Rome, recounting anecdotes of boyhood, touching on politics and
religion, on current events, on conflicting views of the vitalists and
the chemico-physicists, on this and on that, but never to the detriment
of his duck. It is true he did serenely fold his hands and wait, between
times. Then what an event to see him lift the smoking cover and try the
bird with a fork--" to see if the duck is relenting," he explains. At a
certain time he arises from a grave psychological discussion to rake out
hollow places in the co