THE FIRE

If I were `seeing over' a house, and found in every room an iron cage
let into the wall, and were told by the caretaker that these cages
were for me to keep lions in, I think I should open my eyes rather
wide. Yet nothing seems to me more natural than a fire in the grate.

Doubtless, when I began to walk, one of my first excursions was to the
fender, that I might gaze more nearly at the live thing roaring and
raging behind it; and I dare say I dimly wondered by what blessed
dispensation this creature was allowed in a domain so peaceful as my
nursery. I do not think I ever needed to be warned against scaling the
fender. I knew by instinct that the creature within it was dangerous--
fiercer still than the cat which had once strayed into the room and
scratched me for my advances. As I grew older, I ceased to wonder at
the creature's presence and learned to call it `the fire,' quite
lightly. There are so many queer things in the world that we have no
time to go on wondering at the queerness of the things we see
habitually. It is not that these things are in themselves less queer
than they at first seemed to us. It is that our vision of them has
been dimmed. We are lucky when by some chance we see again, for a
fleeting moment, this thing or that as we saw it when it first came
within our ken. We are in the habit of saying that `first impressions
are best,' and that we must approach every question `with an open
mind'; but we shirk the logical conclusion that we were wiser in our
infancy than we are now. `Make yourself even as a little child' we
often say, but recommending the process on moral rather than on
intellectual grounds, and inwardly preening ourselves all the while on
having `put away childish things,' as though clarity of vision were