It was soon heated, and although I spilled some of it in getting it off, and although it was well spiced with ashes, I enjoyed it, with Mrs.Clark's doughnuts and sandwiches (some of which I toasted with a sapling fork) as thoroughly, I think, as ever I enjoyed any meal.
How little we know--we who dread life--how much there is in life! My activities around the fire had warmed me to the bone, and after I was well through with my meal I gathered a plentiful supply of wood and placed it near at hand, I got out my waterproof cape and put it on, and, finally piling more sticks on the fire, I sat down comfortably at the foot of the tree.
I wish I could convey the mystery and the beauty of that night.

Did you ever sit by a campfire and watch the flames dance, and the sparks fly upward into the cool dark air?
Did you ever see the fitful light among the tree-depths, at one moment opening vast shadowy vistas into the forest, at the next dying downward and leaving it all in sombre mystery?
It came to me that night with the wonderful vividness of a fresh experience.
And what a friendly and companionable thing a campfire is! How generous and outright it is! It plays for you when you wish so be lively, and it glows for you when you wish to be reflective.
After a while, for I did not feel in the least sleepy, I stepped out of the woods to the edge of the pasture.

All around me lay the dark and silent earth, and above the blue bowl of the sky, all glorious with the blaze of a million worlds.

Sometimes I have been oppressed by this spectacle of utter space, of infinite distance, of forces too great for me to grasp or understand, but that night it came upon me with fresh wonder and power, and with a sense of great humility that I belonged here too, that I was a part of it all--and would not be neglected or forgotten.

It seemed to me I never had a moment of greater faith than that.
And so, with a sense of satisfaction and peace, I returned to my fire.
As I sat there I could hear the curious noises of the woods, the little droppings, cracklings, rustlings which seemed to make all the world alive.