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Then the men forward will bestir themselves and presently a red glow rises and flickers and paints what it touches, with its own colours. The dry wood crackles and flares on the brick and mortar hearth, and the great kettle is put on. Presently the water boils in go the long bundles of fine-drawn paste, and everybody collects forward to watch the important operation. Stir it quickly at first.
It crackles pleasantly in the mouth. Moreover it is excellent, I am told, for the complexion. One is always hearing of things which are good for the complexion, but there is no doubt that celery stands high on the list. After the burns and freckles of summer one is in need of something. How good that celery should be there at one's elbow.
Then, if you stuff in hemlock into the embers of the fire that you were raking out, till it hums and crackles under the boiler, it won't be long before you hear the propeller thud thudding at the stern again, and before the long roar of the steam whistle echoes over to the town.
Then he drew from his pocket a handful of dried orange peel. "I love to see it burn," he said. "It crackles and spits." He ranged the peel upon the log where the flame would get it, and then settled himself in the big chair. "Perhaps you smoke?" I asked, pushing toward him a box of cigarettes. He smiled. "I thought that you would know my habits. I don't smoke."
This letter, when I have it, must be my compass to steer by. The fire of friendship then blazes and crackles. I never before imagined that so fervent a friendship could subsist between two sister-beauties, both toasts. But even here it may be inflamed by opposition, and by that contradiction which gives vigour to female spirits of a warm and romantic turn.
He tried it on the Purple Crackles that flew in the fields by the blackberry bushes; the little Gold Finches that swayed on the grasses; and the topknotted Kingbirds on the telegraph wires overhead. And he thought he was getting on pretty well with "The boy stood on the burning deck," when a voice took the second line right out of his mouth: "Eating peanuts by the peck!!!!!"
"Everything is electricity or something," said Dave, "and it crackles and works on itself until it makes star dust, and it shakes this together till it makes lumps, and they float round, and pretty soon they're big lumps like the moon and like this little ball of star dust we're riding on and there are millions of them out there all round and about, some a million times bigger than this little one, and they all whirl and whirl, the little ones whirling round the big ones and the big ones whirling round still bigger ones, dancing and swinging and going off to some place that no one knows anything about; and some are old and have lost their people; and some are too young to have any people yet; but millions like this one have people, and on some they are a million years older than we are, and know everything that it'll take us a million years to find out; but even they haven't begun to really know anything compared with what they don't know.
When supper is over, the women throw a fresh torch upon the fire, and, as it crackles up the wide chimney, and sends its red light and sweet odors over the room, they set themselves to their tasks of picking the seeds from the "raw cotton," for, being famous spinners and weavers, they disdain that which has had its staples torn by the teeth of the gin.
The fire before which I am placed crackles, as if in derision, the room is ancient in its furniture; I shudder with sudden fright as I lay my hand upon my heart, and ask myself: "Is that, too, withered?" I am like an old attorney, unswayed by any sentiment whatever.
They had to look into putrid corners, watch for cold blasts from the north, and give ear to the rumbling and gabbling of the forest. They knew: With January, mid-winter time, Starts the year its frosty prime, Blows wild the wind e'er yet'tis still, Crackles the ice in the frozen rill; Epiphany betimes is past, Approaches now the Lenten Fast.
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