Page:Letters of Life.djvu/405

Rh grins, or stifled laughter; but eventually they ceased to be marvellous, and I fancied had a sort of refining influence, drawing them still more palpably within the pale of humanity. So a rude species of mission-school sprang out of this apple traffic.

Another form of prudential ministration of these same trees ought not to be omitted. Observing their tendency to expand and make wood, and ambitious to train them to some degree of proportion, I caused their excrescent branches to be removed every autumn. These, cut in equal lengths and dried, gave aliment to an old-fashioned fire-place in my writing-room, which, notwithstanding the house is warmed by a powerful furnace, I have still kept open. With the occasional aid of hickory, purchased of the wood merchants, they afford a cheering, genial warmth, of a more healthful character than the smouldering, underground machinery of Vulcan, which is capable of concocting gases of no very salubrious nature.

Oh! those black, unsocial registers. Would that the unfortunate people who congregate around them in long winter evenings, might enjoy the cheerful blaze which now, while I am writing, irradiates my den! This corner is sacred, because my blessed father sat in it, and his staff still stands by the cushioned chair that he brought from his own Norwich abode. Relics of the loved and lost always have power over the heart.

Great comfort, have I beside my declining fire just