Driftwood Fire-Worship

Ancient is the cult of the Fire-worshiper, and a remnant of the faithful may still be found in those who, of a cool autumn evening, gather before a broad hearth-altar to serve the god of their idolatry with special offering, plucked, as it were, from the foaming jaws of Fire’s feudal enemy, — even the gray despot of waters, the everlasting Sea himself.

I sing the praises of a frugal yet beautiful practice known to our sacred cult, — the purveying for, and tending of, a Driftwood Fire. The altar of my fellow Fire-worshipers is set up on a bluff overlooking a stretch of glistening beach on the Connecticut shore of Long Island Sound. To this beach come Flotsam and Jetsam, not alone from local streams forced in turn by the tide to part with their own plunderings; but I have reason to think that the woods of Maine, perhaps also those of Canada, contribute, to say nothing of occasional gleanings from Carolinian shores and beyond. Sometimes our far-traveled treasures still bear their labels; for instance, here is an empty peach-crate which announces, in bold letters, that it was consigned from the “Elliott Orchards” of some plantation in Georgia.

The hearth-altar which receives the offerings of my fellow communicants and myself is of most generous dimensions. I have often lamented that I had not received the treatment that Mother Demeter gave her favorite Triptolemus; then might I take my stool and sit within the precincts of the hearth-altar, even as in the early days of the English drama, spectator and player might share the stage together! — In this ample fireplace, we have, on more than one occasion, buried, entire and untrimmed, a young or a dwarfed tree, which Neptune has sent us. First, we planted its twisted and writhing roots firmly between the andirons and beneath supplementary blocks of wood; then, up the vertical shaft, by artful appliance of more inflammable material, would we, as it were, trail the hungry fire, until the god took undulatory, bright, serpentine form before our very eyes, curling his many-darting tongues hither and thither, lapping at every branch and twig of our revivified phœnix tree!

A special sacrificial offering we old ’longshore Fire-worshipers recognize and strive to obtain for our deity; yet it is only through fire that we shall know’ if what we have treasured be worthy of acceptance. Happy are we when we receive the sign: of a sudden, in the midst of the wonted play and color of our fire, there will spring up, here, an emerald flame rivaling the green of April meadows, there, a shaft of aerial violet, interchanging with rose more tender than the tint of clouds that “bar the soft-dying day.” The Fire-worshipers sit in silent communion with the angel of the flame, — communion unbroken, spite of exclamation on the part of the non-elect, “Yes, that must be the copper on the bottom of some old whaling vessel ! ” How we have hunted the beach up and down, and how many unrevealing fragments of drift have we picked up, in hopes that this should prove to be the hiding-place of the prismatic Ariel!

I regret to say that there are those of my seaside neighbors who procure their elfin driftwood from a firm whose business it is artificially to prepare the same, from ordinary wood subjected to the proper chemical bath. But this is a distinct heresy. Those who are guilty thereof cannot claim to have received the baptism of flame, or to belong to the true family of the Fire-worshipers.