The Mushrooms are late this year; the spawn appeared less good than usual, and I expected a total failure, but, after all, there is promise of a dish for Christmas Day. I do not care to grow Mushrooms when the green vegetables are in full glory but now they are very welcome.
As for the Log-house, it is full. We have cut down several trees, and huge Yule logs lie in heaps, ready for the hall fire. We shall want them before the winter is over. If Horace had to say to Thaliarchus in Italy (this is Lord Denman's version)—
"Dissolve the cold, while on the dogs
With lavish hand you fling the logs,"—
surely in these northern latitudes, and in this dearth of coal, the advice is doubly seasonable. And then a log fire is so charming. It does more than warm and blaze—it glows and sparkles. But Mr. Warner, the American, has just given us in his Backlog Studies long pages about wood-fires, and I need only refer to that very pleasant little book. One quotation, however, I will give:—
"We burn in it Hickory wood, cut long. We like the smell of this aromatic forest timber and its clear flame. The Birch is also a sweet wood for the hearth, with a sort of spiritual flame, and an even temper—no snappishness. Some prefer the Elm, which holds fire so well; and I have a neighbour who uses nothing but Apple-tree wood—a solid, family sort of wood, fragrant also, and full of delightful associations. But few people can afford to burn up their fruit-trees."
But besides the dead wood, we have just cut our fresh Christmas boughs. Up against an outhouse I have an immense Ivy, almost as large as one you see growing up some old castle: it spreads along the wall, covering it all over on both sides; then it climbs up a second wall at right angles to the first, and throws its trailing branches down to the very ground: and now they are one mass of blossom.
It is from this ivy that we gather our best Christmas greenery; but there are also cuttings from the Box, Yew, and Holly;—and one variegated Holly has been beautiful, for its mottled leaves have in some sprays become of a perfectly clear and creamy white—the colour of fine old ivory. Mistletoe does not grow with us, and we have to buy it in the market of our town. By the way, how strangely the idea of an English Mistletoe bough now associates itself with that very uncomfortable Italian story of the bride and the oaken chest. How curious, too, that, in this country at least, the memory of poor Ginevra is due not to Rogers's poem, but to Haynes Bayly's ballad.
To-morrow will be Christmas Eve, and to-morrow (so the legend says), in the vale of Avalon,—at the old abbey, where King Arthur was buried and St. Dunstan lived—"outbuds the Glastonbury Thorn"—the sacred Thorn, which sprang from the staff St. Joseph planted there. Unhappily no such Thorns grow in my Lancashire garden.