It was a great relief to all of us to go into the
house, and, before a blazing wood-fire, talk of the end of the world.
In New England it is scarcely ever safe to let the fire go out; it is
best to bank it, for it needs but the turn of a weather-vane at any
hour to sweep the Atlantic rains over us, or to bring down the chill of
Hudson's Bay. There are days when the steam ship on the Atlantic glides
calmly along under a full canvas, but its central fires must always be
ready to make steam against head-winds and antagonistic waves. Even in
our most smiling summer days one needs to have the materials of a
cheerful fire at hand. It is only by this readiness for a change that
one can preserve an equal mind. We are made provident and sagacious by
the fickleness of our climate. We should be another sort of people if
we could have that serene, unclouded trust in nature which the Egyptian
has. The gravity and repose of the Eastern peoples is due to the
unchanging aspect of the sky, and the deliberation and regularity of
the great climatic processes. Our literature, politics, religion, show
the effect of unsettled weather. But they compare favorably with the
Egyptian, for all that.
II
You cannot know, the Young Lady wrote, with what longing I look back
to those winter days by the fire; though all the windows are open to
this May morning, and the brown thrush is singing in the
chestnut-tree, and I see everywhere that first delicate flush of
spring, which seems too evanescent to be color even, and amounts to
little more than a suffusion of the atmosphere.
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