But nothing equals the evening meal cooked over your own fire--if you are not too tired to cook it. Of the cookery I shall speak later; but the fire is as invigorating as the food. Would you taste the consummation of human masculine contentment, stretch your tired legs before your own fire after a long, long walk followed by a full meal: your chamber, the forest primæval, green, indistinct in the twilight; your couch, the scented earth; your canopy, the heavens, curtained with clouds; in your nostrils the incense of burning wood; in your heart the peace which the world giveth not.--The elaborately ornamented modern hearth, with its carved oak or its sculptured marble, is the direct lineal descendant of the nomad fire--the earliest institution of man, the first promoter of civilisation, the binder-together of troglodytic families into tribes. "Hearth and Home" is an ancient, a very ancient, sentiment. It dates back, I take it, to the Glacial Epoch--far enough, in all conscience.--In my mind's eye I see the shivering Cave-man, appalled at the encroaching ice, the deepening cold. He gathers wood, huddles him in caves, the drops from his furry, ill-smelling clothing (there was no tanning then) sputtering in the flames. For self-protection, and from lack of fuel, family makes alliance with family, and the first-formed human community squats silent about the first-formed human hearth. What friendships must have there been cemented, what tales told; what a strange first unburthening of human heart to human heart! What ecstatic love-making, too, must have been enacted in the darksome corners of the sooty cave, the while the grey gorged hunters snored, and toothless beldames gesticulated dumb-crambo scandal by the smouldering brands!--No wonder præhistoric associations cluster even now about what is too often represented by a flamboyant mantelpiece with immaculate tiles and polished brasses. _Pro Aris et Focis!_ The smoking altar is the consecrated symbol of the lowly hearth. XXI The Tramp's Dietary § 45