As for the fire, I keep the little hearth so hot as to warm half the cellar below, and the whole space between the jambs roars for hours together with white flame. To be sure the windows are not very tight, between broken panes and bad joints, so that the fire, large as it is, is by no means an extravagant comfort. [Illustration] As night approaches, I have a huge pile of oak and hickory placed beside the hearth; I put out the tallow candle on the mantel (using the family snuffers, with one leg broken) then, drawing my chair directly in front of the blazing wood, and setting one foot on each of the old iron fire-dogs (until they grow too warm), I dispose myself for an evening of such sober and thoughtful quietude, as I believe, on my soul, that very few of my fellow men have the good fortune to enjoy. My tenant, meantime, in the other room I can hear now and then—though there is a thick stone chimney and broad entry between—multiplying contrivances with his wife to put two babies to sleep. This occupies them, I should say, usually an hour; though my only measure of time (for I never carry a watch into the country), is the blaze of my fire. By ten, or thereabouts, my stock of wood is nearly exhausted; I pile upon the hot coals what remains, and sit watching how it kindles, and blazes, and goes out—even like our joys! and then slip by the light of the embers into my bed, where I luxuriate in such sound and healthful slumber as only such rattling window frames and country air can supply. But to return: the other evening—it happened to be on my last visit to my farmhouse—when I had exhausted all the ordinary rural topics of thought, had formed all sorts of conjectures as to the income of the year; had planned a new wall around one lot, and the clearing up of another, now covered with patriarchal wood, and wondered if the little rickety house would not be, after all, a snug enough box to live and to die in—I fell on a sudden into such an unprecedented line of thought, which took such a deep hold of my sympathies—sometimes even starting tears—that I determined, the next day, to set as much of it as I could recall on paper. Something—it may have been the home-looking blaze (I am a bachelor of—say six and twenty), or possibly a plaintive cry of the baby in my tenant’s room had suggested to me the thought of—Marriage. I piled upon the heated fire-dogs, the last armful of my wood; and now, said I, bracing myself courageously between the arms of my chair—I’ll not flinch; I’ll pursue the thought wherever it leads, though it lead me to the d—— (I am apt to be hasty) at least—continued I, softening—until my fire is out. The wood was green, and at first showed no disposition to blaze. It smoked furiously. Smoke, thought I, always goes before blaze; and so does doubt go before decision: and my reverie, from that very starting point, slipped into this shape: [Illustration] ------------------------------------------------------------------------