y which grew
and clambered and twined about the pictures. Best of all, there was in
our parlor that household altar, the blazing wood fire, whose
wholesome, hearty crackle is the truest household inspiration. I quite
agree with one celebrated American author who holds that an open
fireplace is an altar of patriotism. Would our Revolutionary fathers
have gone barefooted and bleeding over snows to defend air-tight
stoves and cooking-ranges? I trow not. It was the memory of the great
open kitchen-fire, with its back log and fore stick of cord-wood, its
roaring, hilarious voice of invitation, its dancing tongues of flame,
that called to them through the snows of that dreadful winter to keep
up their courage, that made their hearts warm and bright with a
thousand reflected memories. Our neighbors said that it was delightful
to sit by our fire,--but then, for their part, they could not afford
it, wood was so ruinously dear, and all that. Most of these people
could not, for the simple reason that they felt compelled, in order to
maintain the family dignity, to keep up a parlor with great pomp and
circumstance of upholstery, where they sat only on dress occasions,
and of course the wood fire was out of the question.

When children began to make their appearance in our establishment, my
wife, like a well-conducted housekeeper, had the best of nursery
arrangements,--a room all warmed, lighted, and ventilated, and
abounding in every proper resource of amusement to the rising race;
but it was astonishing to see how, notwithstanding this, the
centripetal attraction drew every pair of little pattering feet to our
parlor.

"My dear, why don't you take your blocks upstairs?"

"I want to be where oo are," said with a piteous under lip, was
generally a most convincing answer.

Then, the small people could not be disabused of the idea that certain
chief treasures of their own would be safer under papa's writing-table
or mamma's sofa than in the safest closet of their domains. My
writing-table was dockyard for Arthur's new ship, and stable for
little Tom's pepper-and-salt-colored pony, and carriage-house for
Charley's new wagon, while whole armies of paper dolls kept house in
the recess behind mamma's sofa.

And then, in due time, came the tribe of pets who followed the little
ones and rejoiced in the blaze of the firelight. The boys had a
splendid Newfoundland, which, knowing our weakness, we warned them
with awful gravity was neve