era, it would seem that this custom was not confined to people of
distinction, but was familiar to a class of travellers so low in rank as
to be capable of abusing their opportunities of concealment for the
infliction of wanton injury upon the woods and fences which bounded the
margin, of the high-road. Under the cloud of night and solitude, the
mischief-loving traveller was often in the habit of applying his torch to
the withered boughs of woods, or to artificial hedges; and extensive
ravages by fire, such as now happen, not unfrequently in the American
woods, (but generally from carelessness in scattering the glowing embers
of a fire, or even the ashes of a pipe,) were then occasionally the result
of mere wantonness of mischief. Ovid accordingly notices, as one amongst
the familiar images of daybreak, the half-burnt torch of the traveller;
and, apparently, from the position which it holds in his description,
where it is ranked with the most familiar of all circumstances in all
countries,--that of the rural laborer going out to his morning tasks,--it
must have been common indeed:

"Semiustamque facem vigilata nocte viator
Ponet; et ad solitum rusticus ibit opus."

This occurs in the _Fasti_;--elsewhere he notices it for its danger:

"Ut facibus sepes ardent, cum forte viator
Vel nimis admovit, vel jam sub luce reliquit."

He, however, we see, good-naturedly ascribes the danger to mere
carelessness, in bringing the torch too near to the hedge, or tossing it
away at daybreak. But Varro, a more matter-of-fact observer, does not
disguise the plain truth, that these disasters were often the product of
pure malicious frolic. For instance, in recommending a certain kind of