After sultry storm days, many of the nights were
darkened by smooth black apparently structureless cloud-mantles which
at short intervals were illumined with startling suddenness to a fiery
glow by quick, quivering lightning-flashes, revealing the landscape in
almost noonday brightness, to be instantly quenched in solid
blackness.
But those first days and weeks of unmixed enjoyment and freedom,
reveling in the wonderful wildness about us, were soon to be mingled
with the hard work of making a farm. I was first put to burning brush
in clearing land for the plough. Those magnificent brush fires with
great white hearts and red flames, the first big, wild outdoor fires I
had ever seen, were wonderful sights for young eyes. Again and again,
when they were burning fiercest so that we could hardly approach near
enough to throw on another branch, father put them to awfully
practical use as warning lessons, comparing their heat with that of
hell, and the branches with bad boys. "Now, John," he would
say,--"now, John, just think what an awful thing it would be to be
thrown into that fire:--and then think of hellfire, that is so many
times hotter.
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