Lastly came the match made without phosphorus. When we think of the toil and trouble that the lighting of a fire occasioned, we can understand what store was set on never letting a fire on the hearth go out. An old woman on Dartmoor, recently dead, boasted on her death-bed: “I be sure I’se goin’ to glory; for sixty-three years have I been married, and never in all them years once let the hearth-fire go out.” But there the fire was of peat, which will smoulder on untouched for many hours. There was a stage of civilisation before the tinder-box came in, and that was a stage when fire had to be kept in, and if it went out, borrowed from a neighbour. In the earliest age, fire was obtained by friction; a piece of wood with a hole in it was placed on the ground between the feet. Then a man held a piece shaped like the letter T in his hands, and rapidly twirled this about, with the long end inserted in the hole of the piece he held between his feet, till by friction the upright was ignited. The pieces of wood must be very dry, and requisite dryness was not easily procurable in our moist northern climes, consequently the labour of kindling a flame was proportionately great. Sometimes a wheel was employed, and the axle turned in that to produce a flame. It has been thought that the _fylfot_ [Illustration: fylfot], the crook-legged cross found on so many monuments of antiquity, the _Svastika_ of India, represents an instrument for the production of fire by friction. But owing to the great difficulty in producing fire by this means, the greatest possible care was taken of the household fire, lest it should become extinguished. This originated the worship of Vesta. The flame once procured was guarded against extinction in some central spot by the unmarried women of the house, and when villages and towns were formed, a central circular hut was erected in which a common fire was maintained, and watched continuously. From this central hearth all the hearths of the settlement were supplied. Ovid tells us that the first temple of Vesta at Rome was constructed of wattled walls, and roofed with thatch like the primitive huts of the inhabitants. It was little other than a circular, covered fireplace, and was tended by the unmarried girls of the infant community. It served as the public hearth of Rome, and on it glowed, unextinguished throughout the year, the sacred fire, which was supposed to have been brought from Troy, and the continuance of which was thought to be linked with the fortunes of the city. The name Vesta is believed to be derived from the same root as the Sanscrit _vas_, which means “to dwell, to inhabit,” and shows that she was the goddess of home, and home had the hearth as its focus. A town, a state, is but a large family, and what the domestic hearth was to the house, that the temple of the perpetual fire became to the city. Every town had its Vesta, or common hearth, and the colonies derived their fire from the mother hearth.