THE FASCINATION OFFIRE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLVI, Issue 14145, 21 August 1909, Page 1 (Supplement)

THE FASCINATION OFFIRE.

BY TOHVKGA.

Why is it that, unless human life, is endangered, there is always something fascinating about fire and fascinating in an exciting way? A great storm at sea rarely fascinates in this manner; to most, it is awe-inspiring and depressing, although there are some to whom the spume of the salt sea, upon their faces is like a drink of strong wine. But when a great blaze leaps heavenward and the roar of the flame rings in safe ears, there are few whose hearts do not "leap responsively, few who are not moved to smiles rather than to tears. Even while men fully realise the destruction that is being wrought and fully sympathise with the firemen, even while men are toiling and moiling in the fight against flame, they commonly feel their hearts singing within them, their blood glowing in the red glare as though it warmed them through and through. We all know this fascination. We may not like to admit it, but we are all potential fire-worshippers in our innermost hearts. Firemen who are articulate will sometimes confess that their life grips them as no other occupation could, that with the whirring of the alarm in the stationhouse something stirs within them and possesses them, and that they are never happier or more exalted than when they risk life and limb in fighting a great fire. They hate the smoke, but they never hate th • flame. It is to them an enemy, but their dearest enemy. They flood water upon it, struggle with it. fight it, beat —but it fascinates. Its red glare becomes to them as the bugle to a soldier, the bugle that sounds the charge, as the call was to the old sea fighter, the call, "Boarders away." And the scene of a great fire, black and charred and ruined though it be, is the scene of a battle in which fire fought hard, but man fought harder, is a battleground from which

heroic dead may be borne to burial without their comrades feeling hatred for a vanquished foe.

Of this peculiar fascination of fire there can be no question. Even little babies will stare at lights, and the smallest toddler will watch in the dusk the mysterious glow in the grate. Boys like nothing better than to sit by a camp-fire in the open, and even men become boys again in the joys of " burning-off." Not merely because of the warmth of it all this! Is

there a living soul which has never felt a positive pleasure in the mere looking at fir?, in the filling of the vision with the glowing red of flame? *

And why not? Without light and warmth, which are sun-born, fire-born, no living thing, however humble, could have existed upon the Earth under the laws we find supreme. Light and warmth nursed the faint stirring of Life, whatever

it was, until it crawled and crept and crouched and stood erect in a million million forms. Light and warmth nursed great whales and little fishes, great trees and little mushrooms, great elephants and like caterpillars, great snakes and little monkeys in the trees. From the Unknown Primeval dim senses and expanding nerves have groped lightwards. « warmthwards, fire wards, sunwards. Nothing lives, excepting by that magnetising. The sap that springs in the peach, the blush that rises to a woman's cheek, the throbbing veins of straining athletes, and the stretching of the rambler rose, are moved by this enchantment. And even before! Before there were any things on Earth that moved and crept and crawled and walked, there was movement/ of matter, of rock and cloud, of sea and sky and land, in response to the clamourous call of fire, under the incessant prompting of the central sun.

And so, to love light and warmth, to turn with the joy that is the up-welling of Life within us to the fire and to the

sun, is bred in our bone and inherent to our flesh. It is a part of our unalterable environment, this dependence upon light and warmth. It is not only in its major form the basis of all Mortality ; it is also in Its minor form the basis of all Humanity. The fire of the sun made Life on Earth

possible; the stealing of that fire made Humanity possible For by fire alone we are what we are. The bees have queens and the ants go forth to war tne beavers are engineers and the baboons are a tribe and a people; but man alone has fire, and fire has made him Master and

Lord. As one may understand well who has camped safely in the wilderness, by flaming logs, and has heard the beasts, who fear fire aloi.e, hunt, roaring, for their prey. Fire guarded the savage in his wanderings, and drew him from the caves of cliffs to the open lands, where the wild herds pastured and where the sweet fruits grew. Fire was his watchman and his keeper ; fire was his weapon and his tool; fire gave him wood weapons first, and stone weapons later, and iron weapons later still ; there is nothing which we have, from the pen and its ink and its paper to the house and its roof and its furnishing, from the ship that floats in water to the ship that floats in air, which could be ours to-day without fire. We do not keep fire so constantly before us as once we did. We thrust it into the kitchen, as we thrust God into the church —forgetting in our folly. A man may go from year's end to year's end in civilisation, and never see a naked flame or the warm glow of burning fuel. But flame and glow and the leaping blaze and the fierce, warm heat of hungry fire have been with us for too many ages to leave no mark upon our minds. The firebells ring and the syren calls and the glow rises above the city and the flames leap above the roofand we remember. We remember the caves where we slept in peace, while the wolf and the tiger ranged night-long beyond the fire that gated us. We remember the long nights of the age-long "trek" from savagery to civilisation, when we roused to see the cherished flame and drowsed back happily' because it danced and leaped in the wind and told us of watch well kept. We remember how we defied the cold winter of the North with fire to aid us. We remember, in our souls, a thousand things which teach our understanding that fire is our friend indeed, even while we fight.it to keep it in its place. And perhaps ! Who knows ? May it not be that in our senses ring the presentiment that by fire we came and to fire we go, becoming in the end akin to the pure element and able to live and walk and speak and breathe in the fiery atmosphere of the sun, as now we live and walk and speak and breathe in the dear atmosphere of our Earth. For may not bodies change and change and still change, while spirit remains immortal, -and who shall say that from the flame itself a body may not be woven to enshrine the soul as from water and a few other things; a body has been woven here to enshrine the soul which is Us? And if this iieems to us utterly impossible, to countless millions it has seemed possible —perchance only because they did not "hut themselves, as we do in civilisation, from the wonders of fire and from the

mysteries -of common things. And, however that may be, to look at fire makes us think of many things that we remember, and of many things that we forget, of days that were not as other days, of nights that were not as other nights;, of visions dimly seen in which move our visioned selves, of visions that are viivid as though they lived and were to-day. And while we are children, we try "to. point out to each other the houses and the palaces in the coals, but when we. grow older we keep silent, until we almost think, each one ,of us, that we •alone have this universal cense of the fascination of fire*