run to fires
before--barn, shop, or dwelling-house, or all together. "It's Baker's
barn," cried one. "It is the Codman place," affirmed another. And then
fresh sparks went up above the wood, as if the roof fell in, and we all
shouted "Concord to the rescue!" Wagons shot past with furious speed
and crushing loads, bearing, perchance, among the rest, the agent of the
Insurance Company, who was bound to go however far; and ever and anon
the engine bell tinkled behind, more slow and sure; and rearmost of all,
as it was afterward whispered, came they who set the fire and gave the
alarm. Thus we kept on like true idealists, rejecting the evidence
of our senses, until at a turn in the road we heard the crackling and
actually felt the heat of the fire from over the wall, and realized,
alas! that we were there. The very nearness of the fire but cooled our
ardor. At first we thought to throw a frog-pond on to it; but concluded
to let it burn, it was so far gone and so worthless. So we stood round
our engine, jostled one another, expressed our sentiments through
speaking-trumpets, or in lower tone referred to the great conflagrations
which the world has witnessed, including Bascom's shop, and, between
ourselves, we thought that, were we there in season with our "tub," and
a full frog-pond by, we could turn that threatened last and universal
one into another flood. We finally retreated without doing any
mischief--returned to sleep and "Gondibert." But as for "Gondibert,"
I would except that passage in the preface about wit being the soul's
powder--"but most of mankind are strangers to wit, as Indians are to
powder."

It chanced that I walked that way across the fields the following night,
about the same hour, and hearing a low moaning at this spot, I drew near
in the dark, and discovered the only survivor of the family that I know,
the heir of both its virtues and its vices, who alone was interested in
this burning, lying on his stomach and looking over the cellar wall at
the still smouldering cinders beneath, muttering to himself, as is his
wont. He had been working far off in the river meadows all day, and had
improved the first moments that he could call his own to visit the home
of his fathers and his youth. He gazed into the cellar from all sides
and points of view by turns, always lying down to it, as if there was
some treasure, which he remembered, concealed between the stones, where
there was absolutely nothing but a heap o