The churl! He understood the shrill whistle of
the blast, but had no intelligence for our blithe tones of
brotherhood. This lack of faith in our cordial sympathy, on the
traveller's part, was one among the innumerable tokens how difficult
a task we had in hand for the reformation of the world. We rode on,
however, with still unflagging spirits, and made such good
companionship with the tempest that, at our journey's end, we
professed ourselves almost loath to bid the rude blusterer good-by.
But, to own the truth, I was little better than an icicle, and began
to be suspicious that I had caught a fearful cold.
And now we were seated by the brisk fireside of the old farmhouse,
the same fire that glimmers so faintly among my reminiscences at the
beginning of this chapter. There we sat, with the snow melting out
of our hair and beards, and our faces all ablaze, what with the past
inclemency and present warmth. It was, indeed, a right good fire
that we found awaiting us, built up of great, rough logs, and knotty
limbs, and splintered fragments of an oak-tree, such as farmers are
wont to keep for their own hearths, since these crooked and
unmanageable boughs could never be measured into merchantable cords
for the market. A family of the old Pilgrims might have swung their
kettle over precisely such a fire as this, only, no doubt, a bigger
one; and, contrasting it with my coal-grate, I felt so much the more
that we had transported ourselves a world-wide distance from the
system of society that shackled us at breakfast-time.
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