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Title: Fire Worship (From "Mosses From An Old Manse")

Author: Nathaniel Hawthorne

Posting Date: December 8, 2010 [EBook #9223]
Release Date: November, 2005
First Posted: September 6, 2003
Last Updated: February 6, 2007

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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                     MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE

                      By Nathaniel Hawthorne

                          FIRE WORSHIP



It is a great revolution in social and domestic life, and no less so
in the life of a secluded student, this almost universal exchange of
the open fireplace for the cheerless and ungenial stove.  On such a
morning as now lowers around our old gray parsonage, I miss the
bright face of my ancient friend, who was wont to dance upon the
hearth and play the part of more familiar sunshine.  It is sad to
turn from the cloudy sky and sombre landscape; from yonder hill,
with its crown of rusty, black pines, the foliage of which is so
dismal in the absence of the sun; that bleak pasture-land, and the
broken surface of the potato-field, with the brown clods partly
concealed by the snowfall of last night; the swollen and sluggish
river, with ice-incrusted borders, dragging its bluish-gray stream
along the verge of our orchard like a snake half torpid with the
cold,--it is sad to turn from an outward scene of so little comfort
and find the same sullen influences brooding within the precincts of
my study.  Where is that brilliant guest, that quick and subtle
spirit, whom Prometheus lured from heaven to civilize mankind and
cheer them in their wintry desolation; that comfortable inmate,
whose smile, during eight months of the year, was our sufficient
consolation for summer's lingering advance and early flight? Alas!
blindly inhospitable, grudging the food that kept him cheery and
mercurial, we have thrust him into an iron prison, and compel him to
smoulder away his life on a daily pittance which once would have
been too scanty for his breakfast.  Without a metaphor, we now make
our fire in an air-tight stove, and supply it with some half a dozen
sticks of wood between dawn and nightfall.

I never shall be reconciled to this enormity.  Truly may it be said
that the world looks darker for it.  In one way or another, here and
there and all around us, the inventions of mankind are fast blotting
the picturesque, the poetic, and the beautiful out of human life.
The domestic fire was a type of all these attributes, and seemed to
bring might and majesty, and wild nature and a spiritual essence,
into our in most home, and yet to dwell with us in such friendliness
that its mysteries and marvels excited no dismay.  The same mild
companion that smiled so placidly in our faces was he that comes
roaring out of AEtna and rushes madly up the sky like a fiend
breaking loose from torment and fighting for a place among the upper
angels.  He it is, too, that leaps from cloud to cloud amid the
crashing thunder-storm. It was he whom the Gheber worshipped with no
unnatural idolatry; and it was he who devoured London and Moscow and
many another famous city, and who loves to riot through our own dark
forests and sweep across our prairies, and to whose ravenous maw, it
is said, the universe shall one day be given as a final feast.
Meanwhile he is the great artisan and laborer by whose aid men are
enabled to build a world within a world, or, at least, to smooth
down the rough creation which Nature flung to it.  He forges the
mighty anchor and every lesser instrument; he drives the steamboat
and drags the rail-car; and it was he--this creature of
terrible might, and so many-sided utility and all-comprehensive
destructiveness--that used to be the cheerful, homely friend of our
wintry days, and whom we have made the prisoner of this iron cage.

How kindly he was! and, though the tremendous agent of change, yet
bearing himself with such gentleness, so rendering himself a part of
all life-long and age-coeval associations, that it seemed as if he
were the great conservative of nature.  While a man was true to the
fireside, so long would he be true to country and law, to the God
whom his fathers worshipped, to the wife of his youth, and to all
things else which instinct or religion has taught us to consider
sacred.  With how sweet humility did this elemental spirit perform
all needful offices for the household in which he was domesticated!
He was equal to the concoction of a grand dinner, yet scorned not to
roast a potato or toast a bit of cheese.  How humanely did he
cherish the school-boy's icy fingers, and thaw the old man's joints
with a genial warmth which almost equalled the glow of youth!  And
how carefully did he dry the cowhide boots that had trudged through
mud and snow, and the shaggy outside garment stiff with frozen
sleet! taking heed, likewise, to the comfort of the faithful dog who
had followed his master through the storm.  When did he refuse a
coal to light a pipe, or even a part of his own substance to kindle
a neighbor's fire?  And then, at twilight, when laborer, or scholar,
or mortal of whatever age, sex, or degree, drew a chair beside him
and looked into his glowing face, how acute, how profound, how
comprehensive was his sympathy with the mood of each and all!  He
pictured forth their very thoughts.  To the youthful he showed the
scenes of the adventurous life before them; to the aged the shadows
of departed love and hope; and, if all earthly things had grown
distasteful, he could gladden the fireside muser with golden
glimpses of a better world.  And, amid this varied communion with
the human soul, how busily would the sympathizer, the deep moralist,
the painter of magic pictures, be causing the teakettle to boil!

Nor did it lessen the charm of his soft, familiar courtesy and
helpfulness that the mighty spirit, were opportunity offered him,
would run riot through the peaceful house, wrap its inmates in his
terrible embrace, and leave nothing of them save their whitened
bones.  This possibility of mad destruction only made his domestic
kindness the more beautiful and touching.  It was so sweet of him,
being endowed with such power, to dwell day after day, and one long
lonesome night after another, on the dusky hearth, only now and then
betraying his wild nature by thrusting his red tongue out of the
chimney-top!  True, he had done much mischief in the world, and was
pretty certain to do more; but his warm heart atoned for all.  He
was kindly to the race of man; and they pardoned his characteristic
imperfections.

The good old clergyman, my predecessor in this mansion, was well
acquainted with the comforts of the fireside.  His yearly allowance
of wood, according to the terms of his settlement, was no less than
sixty cords.  Almost an annual forest was converted from sound
oak logs into ashes, in the kitchen, the parlor, and this little
study, where now an unworthy successor, not in the pastoral office,
but merely in his earthly abode, sits scribbling beside an air-tight
stove.  I love to fancy one of those fireside days while the good
man, a contemporary of the Revolution, was in his early prime, some
five-and-sixty years ago.  Before sunrise, doubtless, the blaze
hovered upon the gray skirts of night and dissolved the frostwork
that had gathered like a curtain over the small window-panes.  There
is something peculiar in the aspect of the morning fireside; a
fresher, brisker glare; the absence of that mellowness which can be
produced only by half-consumed logs, and shapeless brands with the
white ashes on them, and mighty coals, the remnant of tree-trunks
that the hungry, elements have gnawed for hours.  The morning
hearth, too, is newly swept, and the brazen andirons well
brightened, so that the cheerful fire may see its face in them.
Surely it was happiness, when the pastor, fortified with a
substantial breakfast, sat down in his arm-chair and slippers and
opened the Whole Body of Divinity, or the Commentary on Job, or
whichever of his old folios or quartos might fall within the range
of his weekly sermons.  It must have been his own fault if the
warmth and glow of this abundant hearth did not permeate the
discourse and keep his audience comfortable in spite of the
bitterest northern blast that ever wrestled with the church-steeple.
He reads while the heat warps the stiff covers of the volume; he
writes without numbness either in his heart or fingers; and, with
unstinted hand, he throws fresh sticks of wood upon the fire.

A parishioner comes in.  With what warmth of benevolence--how should
he be otherwise than warm in any of his attributes?--does the
minister bid him welcome, and set a chair for him in so close
proximity to the hearth, that soon the guest finds it needful to rub
his scorched shins with his great red hands!  The melted snow drips
from his steaming boots and bubbles upon the hearth.  His puckered
forehead unravels its entanglement of crisscross wrinkles.  We lose
much of the enjoyment of fireside heat without such an opportunity
of marking its genial effect upon those who have been looking the
inclement weather in the face.  In the course of the day our
clergyman himself strides forth, perchance to pay a round of
pastoral visits; or, it may he, to visit his mountain of a wood-pile
and cleave the monstrous logs into billets suitable for the fire.
He returns with fresher life to his beloved hearth.  During the
short afternoon the western sunshine comes into the study and
strives to stare the ruddy blaze out of countenance but with only a
brief triumph, soon to be succeeded by brighter glories of its
rival.  Beautiful it is to see the strengthening gleam, the
deepening light that gradually casts distinct shadows of the human
figure, the table, and the high-backed chairs upon the opposite
wall, and at length, as twilight comes on, replenishes the room with
living radiance and makes life all rose-color.  Afar the wayfarer
discerns the flickering flame as it dances upon the windows, and
hails it as a beacon-light of humanity, reminding him, in his cold
and lonely path, that the world is not all snow, and solitude, and
desolation.  At eventide, probably, the study was peopled with the
clergyman's wife and family, and children tumbled themselves upon
the hearth-rug, and grave puss sat with her back to the fire, or
gazed, with a semblance of human meditation, into its fervid depths.
Seasonably the plenteous ashes of the day were raked over the
mouldering brands, and from the heap came jets of flame, and an
incense of night-long smoke creeping quietly up the chimney.

Heaven forgive the old clergyman!  In his later life, when for
almost ninety winters he had been gladdened by the firelight,--when
it had gleamed upon him from infancy to extreme age, and never
without brightening his spirits as well as his visage, and perhaps
keeping him alive so long,--he had the heart to brick up his
chimney-place and bid farewell to the face of his old friend
forever, why did he not take an eternal leave of the sunshine too?
His sixty cords of wood had probably dwindled to a far less ample
supply in modern times; and it is certain that the parsonage had
grown crazy with time and tempest and pervious to the cold; but
still it was one of the saddest tokens of the decline and fall of
open fireplaces that, the gray patriarch should have deigned to warm
himself at an air-tight stove.

And I, likewise,--who have found a home in this ancient owl's-nest
since its former occupant took his heavenward flight,--I, to my
shame, have put up stoves in kitchen and parlor and chamber. Wander
where you will about the house, not a glimpse of the earth-born,
heaven-aspiring fiend of Etna,--him that sports in the thunder-storm,
the idol of the Ghebers, the devourer of cities, the forest-rioter
and prairie-sweeper, the future destroyer of our earth, the
old chimney-corner companion who mingled himself so sociably with
household joys and sorrows,--not a glimpse of this mighty and kindly
one will greet your eyes.  He is now an invisible presence.  There
is his iron cage.  Touch it, and he scorches your fingers.  He
delights to singe a garment or perpetrate any other little unworthy
mischief; for his temper is ruined by the ingratitude of mankind,
for whom he cherished such warmth of feeling, and to whom he taught
all their arts, even that of making his own prison-house.  In his
fits of rage he puffs volumes of smoke and noisome gas through the
crevices of the door, and shakes the iron walls of his dungeon so as
to overthrow the ornamental urn upon its summit.  We tremble lest he
should break forth amongst us.  Much of his time is spent in sighs,
burdened with unutterable grief, and long drawn through the funnel.
He amuses himself, too, with repeating all the whispers, the moans,
and the louder utterances or tempestuous howls of the wind; so that
the stove becomes a microcosm of the aerial world.  Occasionally
there are strange combinations of sounds,--voices talking almost
articulately within the hollow chest of iron,--insomuch that fancy
beguiles me with the idea that my firewood must have grown in that
infernal forest of lamentable trees which breathed their complaints
to Dante.  When the listener is half asleep he may readily take
these voices for the conversation of spirits and assign them an
intelligible meaning.  Anon there is a pattering noise,--drip,
drip, drip,--as if a summer shower were falling within the narrow
circumference of the stove.

These barren and tedious eccentricities are all that the air-tight
stove can bestow in exchange for the invaluable moral influences
which we have lost by our desertion of the open fireplace.  Alas! is
this world so very bright that we can afford to choke up such a
domestic fountain of gladsomeness, and sit down by its darkened
source without being conscious of a gloom?

It is my belief that social intercourse cannot long continue what it
has been, now that we have subtracted from it so important and
vivifying an element as firelight.  The effects will be more
perceptible on our children and the generations that shall succeed
them than on ourselves, the mechanism of whose life may remain
unchanged, though its spirit be far other than it was. The sacred
trust of the household fire has been transmitted in unbroken
succession from the earliest ages, and faithfully cherished in spite
of every discouragement such as the curfew law of the Norman
conquerors, until in these evil days physical science has nearly
succeeded in extinguishing it.  But we at least have our youthful
recollections tinged with the glow of the hearth, and our life-long
habits and associations arranged on the principle of a mutual bond
in the domestic fire.  Therefore, though the sociable friend be
forever departed, yet in a degree he will be spiritually present
with us; and still more will the empty forms which were once full of
his rejoicing presence continue to rule our manners.  We shall draw
our chairs together as we and our forefathers have been wont for
thousands of years back, and sit around some blank and empty corner
of the room, babbling with unreal cheerfulness of topics suitable to
the homely fireside.  A warmth from the past--from the ashes of
bygone years and the raked-up embers of long ago--will sometimes
thaw the ice about our hearts; but it must be otherwise with our
successors.  On the most favorable supposition, they will be
acquainted with the fireside in no better shape than that of the
sullen stove; and more probably they will have grown up amid furnace
heat in houses which might be fancied to have their foundation over
the infernal pit, whence sulphurous steams and unbreathable
exhalations ascend through the apertures of the floor.  There will
be nothing to attract these poor children to one centre.  They will
never behold one another through that peculiar medium of vision the
ruddy gleam of blazing wood or bituminous coal---which gives the
human spirit so deep an insight into its fellows and melts all
humanity into one cordial heart of hearts.  Domestic life, if it may
still be termed domestic, will seek its separate corners, and never
gather itself into groups. The easy gossip; the merry yet
unambitious Jest; the life-like, practical discussion of real
matters in a casual way; the soul of truth which is so often
incarnated in a simple fireside word,--will disappear from earth.
Conversation will contract the air of debate, and all mortal
intercourse be chilled with a fatal frost.

In classic times, the exhortation to fight "pro axis et focis," for
the altars and the hearths, was considered the strongest appeal that
could be made to patriotism.  And it seemed an immortal utterance;
for all subsequent ages and people have acknowledged its force and
responded to it with the full portion of manhood that nature had
assigned to each.  Wisely were the altar and the hearth conjoined in
one mighty sentence; for the hearth, too, had its kindred sanctity.
Religion sat down beside it, not in the priestly robes which
decorated and perhaps disguised her at the altar, but arrayed in a
simple matron's garb, and uttering her lessons with the tenderness
of a mother's voice and heart.  The holy hearth!  If any earthly and
material thing, or rather a divine idea embodied in brick and
mortar, might be supposed to possess the permanence of moral truth,
it was this.  All revered it.  The man who did not put off his shoes
upon this holy ground would have deemed it pastime to trample upon
the altar.  It has been our task to uproot the hearth.  What further
reform is left for our children to achieve, unless they overthrow
the altar too?  And by what appeal hereafter, when the breath of
hostile armies may mingle with the pure, cold breezes of our
country, shall we attempt to rouse up native valor?  Fight for your
hearths?  There will be none throughout the land.

FIGHT FOR YOUR STOVES!  Not I, in faith.  If in such a cause I
strike a blow, it shall be on the invader's part; and Heaven grant
that it may shatter the abomination all to pieces!








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