It is not to be denied, and for truth's sake not to be regretted, that
this amusing juvenile glammary has seen its best days in New England.
The schoolmaster has been abroad to some purpose. Not without results
have our lyceum lecturers and travels of Peter Parley brought everything
in heaven above and in the earth below to the level of childhood's
capacities. In our cities and large towns children nowadays pass
through the opening acts of life's marvellous drama with as little
manifestation of wonder and surprise as the Indian does through the
streets of a civilized city which he has entered for the first time.
Yet Nature, sooner or later, vindicates her mysteries; voices from the
unseen penetrate the din of civilization. The child philosopher and
materialist often becomes the visionary of riper years, running into
illuminism, magnetism, and transcendentalism, with its inspired priests
and priestesses, its revelations and oracular responses.

But in many a green valley of rural New England there are children yet;
boys and girls are still to be found not quite overtaken by the march of
mind. There, too, are huskings, and apple-bees, and quilting parties,
and huge old-fashioned fireplaces piled with crackling walnut, flinging
its rosy light over happy countenances of youth and scarcely less happy
age. If it be true that, according to Cornelius Agrippa, "a wood fire
doth drive away dark spirits," it is, nevertheless, also true that
around it the simple superstitions of our ancestors still love to
linger; and there the half-sportful, half-serious charms of which I have
spoken are oftenest resorted to. It would be altogether out of place to
think of them by our black, unsightly stoves, or in the dull and dark
monotony of our furnace-heated rooms. Within the circle of the light of
the open fire safely might the young conjurers question destiny; for
none but kindly and gentle messengers from wonderland could venture