Too tired to undress, too tired to think, I am more than content to
watch the noble and ever-changing pageant of the fire. The finest part
of this spectacle is surely when the flames sink, and gradually the
red-gold caverns are revealed, gorgeous, mysterious, with inmost
recesses of white heat. It is often thus that my fire welcomes me when
the long day's task is done. After I have gazed long into its depths,
I close my eyes to rest them, opening them again, with a start,
whenever a coal shifts its place, or some belated little tongue of
flame spurts forth with a hiss.... Vaguely I liken myself to the
watchman one sees by night in London, wherever a road is up, huddled
half-awake in his tiny cabin of wood, with a cresset of live coal
before him.... I have come down in the world, and am a night-watchman,
and I find the life as pleasant as I had always thought it must be,
except when I let the fire out, and awake shivering.... Shivering I
awake, in the twilight of dawn. Ashes, white and grey, some rusty
cinders, a crag or so of coal, are all that is left over from last
night's splendour. Grey is the lawn beneath my window, and little
ghosts of rabbits are nibbling and hobbling there. But anon the east
will be red, and, ere I wake, the sky will be blue, and the grass
quite green again, and my fire will have arisen from its ashes, a
cackling and comfortable phoenix.


SEEING PEOPLE OFF

I am not good at it. To do it well seems to me one of the most
difficult things in the world, and probably seems so to you, too.

To see a friend off from Waterloo to Vauxhall were easy enough. But we