Explore "A Life for a Life, Volume I" by Dinah Mulock on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
'Tis over -- the weary dinner-party. I can lock myself in here, take off my dress, pull down my hair, clasp my two bare arms one on each shoulder -- such a comfortable attitude! -- and stare into the fire.
There is something peculiar about our fires. Most likely the quantity of fire-wood we use for this region gives them that curious aromatic smell. How, I love fir-trees of any sort in any season of the year! How I used to delight myself in our pine-woods, strolling in and out among the boles of the trees so straight, strong, and unchangeable -- grave in summer, and green in winter! How I have stood listening to the wind in their tops, and looking for the fir-cones, wonderful treasures! which they had dropped on the soft dry mossy ground. What glorious fun it was to fill my pinafore -- or in more dignified days my black silk apron -- with fir-cones; to heap a surreptitious store of them in a corner of the school-room, and burn them, one by one, on the top of the fire. How they did blaze!