e an Elizabethan to tears, so petty and
mean are they, and so incapable of radiation. We English people would
suffer no loss in kindliness and tolerance were the inglenook restored
to our homes. The ingle humanises.

Although the father of the family no longer, as in ancient Greece,
performs on the hearth religious rites, yet it is still a sacred spot.
Lovers whisper there, and there friends exchange confidences. Husband
and wife face the fire hand in hand. The table is for wit and good
humour, the hearth is for something deeper and more personal. The
wisest counsels are offered beside the fire, the most loving sympathy
and comprehension are there made explicit. It is the scene of the best
dual companionship. The fire itself is a friend, having the prime
attribute--warmth. One of the most human passages of that most human
poem, _The Deserted Village_, tells how the wanderer was now and again
taken by the memory of the hearth of his distant home:--

"I still had hopes my latest hours to crown,
Amidst these humble bowers to lay me down ...
Around my fire an evening group to draw,
And tell of all I felt, and all I saw...."

Only by the fireside could a man so unbosom himself. A good fire
extracts one's best; it will not be resisted. FitzGerald's "Meadows in
Spring" contains some of the best fireside stanzas:--

"Then with an old friend
I talk of our youth--
How 'twas gladsome, but often
Foolish, forsooth:
But gladsome, gladsome!

Or to get merry
We sing some old rhyme,
That made the wood ring again
In summer time--
Sweet summer time!

Then we go to drinking,
Silent and snug;
Nothing passes between us
Save a brown jug--
Sometimes!

And sometimes a tear
Will rise in each eye,
Seeing the two old friends
So merrily--
So merrily!"

The hearth also is for ghost stories; indeed, a ghost story demands a
fire. If England were warmed wholly by hot-water pipes or gas stoves,
the Society for Psychical Research would be dissolved. Gas stoves are
poor comforters. They heat the room, it is true, but they do so after
a manner of their own, and there they stop. For encouragement, for
inspiration, you seek the gas stove in vain. Who could be witty, who
could be humane, before a gas stove? It does so little for the eye and
nothing for the imagination; its flame is so artificial and restricted
a