becomes immortal in the sacrifice, I deem it more
fitting that their earthly part should die by a concentration of that
burning element which would at any rate be in some form their ending;
so they have their altar on this bright hearth.

Let us pile up the fire anew with drift-wood, Annie. We can choose at
random; for our logs came from no single forest. It is considered an
important branch of skill in the country to know the varieties of
firewood, and to choose among them well. But to-night we have the whole
Atlantic shore for our wood-pile, and the Gulf Stream for a teamster.
Every foreign tree of rarest name may, for aught we know, send its
treasures to our hearth. Logwood and satinwood may mingle with cedar
and maple; the old cellar floors of this once princely town are of
mahogany, and why not our fire? I have a very indistinct impression
what teak is; but if it means something black and impenetrable and
nearly indestructible, then there is a piece of it, Annie, on the
hearth at this moment.

It must be owned, indeed, that timbers soaked long enough in salt-water
seem almost to lose their capacity of being burnt. Perhaps it was for
this reason that, in the ancient "lyke-wakes" of the North of England,
a pinch of salt was placed upon the dead body, as a safeguard against
purgatorial flames. Yet salt melts ice, and so represents heat, one
would think; and one can fancy that these fragments should be doubly
inflammable, by their saline quality, and by the unmerciful rubbing
which the waves have given them. I have noticed what warmth this
churning process communicates to the clotted foam that lies in
tremulous masses among the rocks, holding all the blue of ocean in its
bubbles. After one's hands are chilled with the water, one can warm
them in the foam. These drift-wood fragments are but the larger foam of
shipwrecks.

What strange comrades this flame brings together! As foreign sailors
from remotest seas may sit and chat side by side, before some
boarding-house fire in this seaport town, so these shapeless sticks,
perhaps gathered from far wider wanderings, now nestle together against
the backlog, and converse in strange dialects as they burn. It is
written in the Heetopades of Veeshnoo Sarma, that, "as two planks,
floating on the surface of the mighty receptacle of the waters, meet,
and having met are separated forever, so do beings in this life come
together and presently are parted." Perchance this chimney re