The Blithedale Romance - Page 14/170

The pleasant firelight! I must still keep harping on it. The kitchen

hearth had an old-fashioned breadth, depth, and spaciousness, far

within which lay what seemed the butt of a good-sized oak-tree, with

the moisture bubbling merrily out at both ends. It was now half an

hour beyond dusk. The blaze from an armful of substantial sticks,

rendered more combustible by brushwood and pine, flickered powerfully

on the smoke-blackened walls, and so cheered our spirits that we cared

not what inclemency might rage and roar on the other side of our

illuminated windows. A yet sultrier warmth was bestowed by a goodly

quantity of peat, which was crumbling to white ashes among the burning

brands, and incensed the kitchen with its not ungrateful fragrance.

The exuberance of this household fire would alone have sufficed to

bespeak us no true farmers; for the New England yeoman, if he have the

misfortune to dwell within practicable distance of a wood-market, is as

niggardly of each stick as if it were a bar of California gold.

But it was fortunate for us, on that wintry eve of our untried life, to

enjoy the warm and radiant luxury of a somewhat too abundant fire. If

it served no other purpose, it made the men look so full of youth, warm

blood, and hope, and the women--such of them, at least, as were anywise

convertible by its magic--so very beautiful, that I would cheerfully

have spent my last dollar to prolong the blaze. As for Zenobia, there

was a glow in her cheeks that made me think of Pandora, fresh from

Vulcan's workshop, and full of the celestial warmth by dint of which he

had tempered and moulded her.

"Take your places, my dear friends all," cried she; "seat yourselves

without ceremony, and you shall be made happy with such tea as not many

of the world's working-people, except yourselves, will find in their

cups to-night. After this one supper, you may drink buttermilk, if you

please. To-night we will quaff this nectar, which, I assure you, could

not be bought with gold."

We all sat down,--grizzly Silas Foster, his rotund helpmate, and the

two bouncing handmaidens, included,--and looked at one another in a

friendly but rather awkward way. It was the first practical trial of

our theories of equal brotherhood and sisterhood; and we people of

superior cultivation and refinement (for as such, I presume, we

unhesitatingly reckoned ourselves) felt as if something were already

accomplished towards the millennium of love. The truth is, however,

that the laboring oar was with our unpolished companions; it being far

easier to condescend than to accept of condescension. Neither did I

refrain from questioning, in secret, whether some of us--and Zenobia

among the rest--would so quietly have taken our places among these good

people, save for the cherished consciousness that it was not by

necessity but choice. Though we saw fit to drink our tea out of

earthen cups to-night, and in earthen company, it was at our own option

to use pictured porcelain and handle silver forks again to-morrow.