INTRODUCTION

THE introduction is an anomaly; written last it is placed first-afterthought posing as forethought.

It is sometimes the author's bête noire, a cause of perplexity. Who shall write it? If the author, what shall he say about his own book? For him to commend it would be unseemly: "Let another man praise thee and not thine own mouth." To apologize for it would be humiliating and self-stultifying, for if it needs apology or defense, why does he publish it? Besides, the critics-if any notice the book-will save him the trouble of pointing out its faults and deficiencies. If the author avoids his dilemma by asking a friend to write the introduction, he may be laying an unwelcome burden on an innocent person, too polite to decline. And, if a book is bold enough to brave the perils of print, ought it not to have the courage to face publicity without usher or chaperon?

Unless an introduction explains or refers to the book's insides, the name is a misnomer; it is not, properly speaking, an introduction. Yet even Edmund C. Stedman's socalled introduction to one of his own books makes no reference to what follows, and is, in reality, a separate essay on a different subject and might as properly

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appear at the end as at the beginning of the volume.

Responsibility for the publication of this book rests with those who have requested it, and with the great Publishing House which, in the one hundred and thirty-third year of its increasingly prosperous existence and ever-widening influence, takes the risk of offering to its vast public The Open Fire And Other Essays.

If, in deference to custom, a preface is expected, then, in order that this may have the semblance of an introduction, by making some reference to the contents, the author ventures to remark that these essays have some range and variety of theme, and to say that they are written in the spirit of Browning's lines:

"This world's no blot or blank;

It means intensely and means good.

To find its meaning is my meat and drink."

THE OPEN FIRE: A REVERIE

"THE open fire is a primitive, elemental thing; it is a bit of the red heart of nature laid bare; it is a dragon of the prime docile and friendly there in the corner. What pictures! what activity! how social! You are not permitted to forget it for a moment. How it responds when you nudge it. How it rejoices when you feed it. Why, an open fire in your room is a whole literature. It supplements your library as nothing else in the room does or can."

Not a poetic Burroughs rhapsody, this, but description fairly scientific and verified by common experience. "A primitive and elemental thing," wrote the master of Slabsides, well acquainted with the elements. And so it is: the subtle, mysterious, mesmeric spell of the open fire is elemental, like to those which winds and waters cast over human sensitivity—as witching and irresistible as they are inexplicable. The four elements the ancients knew were earth, air, water, fire. All these have the call on man. His sensibilities lie open to them. Their touch notifies him that at least the fringes of his constitution are interwoven with the world, and that to the powers called Nature his kinship is close and his subjection sure. Physically, they own him,

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and at any moment may take possession. The cosmic tides wash all his coasts and flush all his inlets.

Exceptionally sensitive to all things elemental was the emotional nature of Robert Burns, who said that the influence which most exalted and enraptured him was that of a stormy wind howling among the trees and raging over the plains. And the sound of moving air is one of the stirring elemental voices, whether whispering in the silky grass, or rustling leafy branches, or solemnizing the pine forest with a sonorous chant, or roaring in wild tempests across the somber sky.

Equally potent with the voices of the winds are the voices of the waters in the elemental spell they cast over human kind, as in the rhythmic booming of the breakers on the beach or the cannonading of great waves against the cliff, or the sibilance of receding wavelets smoothing out the seaside sands. Bishop Warren could remember that during weeks of tramping and climbing in the high Alps, he and his friend fell asleep each night within hearing of the hoarse roar or muffled thunder of some cataract or mountain torrent, and found it like a wild, but soothing lullaby sung by Mother Nature to her tired children. Gilbert White, the naturalist, fabled how a young tortoise went abroad and kept a diary of his travels. The pleasantest recollection recorded in the hard-shell tourist's notes of a sea Voyage was that "the rippling of the water