It was the olden custom for host and guests to watch the first burning of this ashen fagot, and as the hazel withes one by one burned away the severing of the bond was the signal for the passing of the flagon, the loosing of the genial hospitality pent within the breasts of all and set free with the flames. Perhaps many who took part in these rollicking ceremonials thought they cared merely for the cakes and ale, but even they were self deceived. It was the genial freeing of the spirit of Christmas good-will to all, the fellowship that touched deepest, though they may not have formulated the fact even in their thoughts. No wonder that the children, whose clear sight is unblurred by too much learning of things which are not so, knew that to this fond fire on Christmas eve must come that patron saint of gifts, Santa Claus, even though, the house being locked, he must climb down the wide chimney to reach it. We have forgotten the shoe, which in the folk tales of our earliest forbears of the North European forests was the symbol of mutually helpful deeds of love. The children of these days placed it by the Yule fire, that Santa Claus might load it with gifts. Nowadays we hang the stocking in its stead, perhaps because it holds more. ***** I do not take it kindly of old Ben Franklin that he, almost an hundred years ago, with his Poor Richard wisdom taught us to economize our fuel by shutting up our fire in stoves, for what we gained in the flesh we lost in the spirit, and it is good that in the modern house, however mechanically complicated the heating apparatus, we build fireplaces once again that our souls may be warmed with the sight of the flame. The impulse to worship fire still lingers within us and though we have better creeds than that of Zoroaster and truer spiritual ideals than the Parsees we can have no more appealing symbol of the purely spiritual than flame. Phlogiston might well be another word for soul and we are unkind to the old philosophers to take them too literally. The alchemists were dreamers rather than doers after all, and though it is the fashion to laud the doers it is often the dreamers that see most clearly. As the flame leapt upward from the burning wood they saw in it a rare, pure, ethereal substance which they called Phlogiston.