THE RELUCTANT CAMP-FIRE

The depressing opposite of the fire that is the warm heart of the camp is the pile of green or rain-soaked fuel that in spite of all coaxing and nursing refuses to yield a cheerful flame. Shavings from the resin-embalmed heart of a dead pine and scrolls of birch bark fail to enkindle it to more than flicker and smoke, while the wet and hungry campers brood forlornly over the cheerless centre of their temporary home, with watery eyes and souls growing sick of camp life.

Night is falling, and the shadows of the woods thicken into solid gloom that teems with mysterious horrors, which stretch their intangible claws through the darkness to chill the backs of the timid with an icy touch, and the silence is terrible with unuttered howlings of imaginary beasts.

Each one is ready to blame the other for the common discomfort, and all, the high priest, who so far fails to kindle the altar fire. He is an impostor, who should be smothered in the reek of his own failure. Yet, as the group regard him with unkind glances and mutterings of disapproval, he perseveres, feeding the faint flame with choice morsels of fat wood and nursing it with his breath, his bent face and puffed cheeks now a little lightened, now fading into gloom, till suddenly the sullenness of the reluctant fuel is overcome, wings of flame flutter up the column of smoke, and the black pile leaps into a lurid tower of light, from whose peak a white banner of smoke flaunts upward, saluted by the waving boughs that it streams among.

Tent and shanty, familiar trees, and moving figures with their circle of grotesque, dancing shadows, spring into sudden existence out of the blank darkness. The magic touch of the firelight dispels every sullen look, warms every heart to genial comradeship; jokes flash back and forth merrily, and the camp pulses again with reawakened cheerful life. Verily, fire worketh wonders in divers ways.