THE YOUTH’S CABINET.

159

a

The Bonfire ;

OR, MY FIRST ACT OF DISOBEDIENCE.

 

BY FRANCIS C, WOODWORTH.

 

HEN achild, I had
a great passion
for a large fire.
I was brought

= up in the coun-

~ try;and nothing
pleased me so
well as to go in-
to the pasture
with my father’s hired men, at a particu-
lar season of the year, and see them set
fire to the heaps of brush which they
had collected. One winter, when I was
quite young, our school-house burned

down. It caught fire in the night, and a
pretty dark night, too, according to my

present recollection, I enjoyed the
fire from our parlor windows—for the
school-house was only a few rods from
my father’s—and although I was sorry
to have the building destroyed, and, pos-
sibly a stray tear or two found their way
down my cheeks, as I heard the crack-
ling of the flames, saw the leaves of the
children’s spelling-beoks all burned to
ashes, rising above that mass of ruin,
until they were lost in the darkness ;
and as I heard the lamentations of the

almost frantic schoolmaster, who, as I
recollect, had been drawn to the scene,
apparently, without having very care-
fully attended to the duties of the toilet-—
though I was sorry to have the old
school-house burned down, yet I thought
I never had beheld a more splendid spec-
tacle than the flame presented. The
event figured in my recollection, with a
good deal of distinctness, for a long

 

time; and while I hoped that no more
school-houses would take fire, I devoutly
wished, that in case any one should get
into such an unfortunate predicament,
and should, withal, make so respectable
a blaze as ours did, I might, by some
means, be within sight of it at the time.

I suppose there was nothing wrong
in this passion of mine. It was right
enough in itself, perhaps, But there
was something wrong in the mode I took
to indulge the passion ; and that is what
Iam coming at. One windy day, in the
fall of the year, I asked my mother to
let me go into the lot back of the barn,
and make a little bonfire. She was not
willing. I plead with her, however, just
as children should not do, when their
parents deny them anything. I only
wanted to make a little bonfire, a very
little one—so I told her. It would not
do the least harm in the world, I should

be so careful. Still my mother refused.

She was not willing to trust me with fire
in such a windy day and so near the
barn. So she utterly refused her con-
sent to my darling scheme of making a
little bonfire.

Now, reader, what do you think I did,
in this case? “You gave up the
scheme,” I think I hear you say—“ you
gave it up, and amused yourself in some
other way.” That is just exactly what I
ought to have done, but—I grieve to be
obliged to say it—it is exactly what I did
not do.

There was a sort of dialogue going on
in my mind, for the space of several