It
was in the Paradise Valley that I first thought of Rip Van Winkle.
I wanted to come back again for the sake of old times."
But what has all this to do with an open fire? I will tell you. It
is at the places along the stream, where the little flames of love
and friendship have been kindled in bygone days, that the past
returns most vividly. These are the altars of remembrance.
It is strange how long a small fire will leave its mark. The
charred sticks, the black coals, do not decay easily. If they lie
well up the hank, out of reach of the spring floods, they will stay
there for years. If you have chanced to build a rough fireplace of
stones from the brook, it seems almost as if it would last forever.
There is a mossy knoll beneath a great butternut-tree on the
Swiftwater where such a fireplace was built four years ago; and
whenever I come to that place now I lay the rod aside, and sit down
for a little while by the fast-flowing water, and remember.
This is what I see: A man wading up the stream, with a creel over
his shoulder, and perhaps a dozen trout in it; two little lads in
gray corduroys running down the path through the woods to meet him,
one carrying a frying-pan and a kettle, the other with a basket of
lunch on his arm. Then I see the bright flames leaping up in the
fireplace, and hear the trout sizzling in the pan, and smell the
appetizing odour.
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