"Yes, indeed. You'll find them very easy. They're very beautiful songs and I think we're very lucky to have them."
"Who wrote them? Girls that belong?"
"Some of them, but not all, or nearly all. We have found many beautiful songs about fire and the things we love that were written by other poets who never heard of the Camp Fire Girls at all. And yet they seem to be just the right songs for us."
"That's funny, isn't it, Miss Eleanor?"
"Not a bit, Zara. Because the Camp Fire isn't a new thing, really. Not the big idea that's back of it, that you'll learn as you stay with us, and get to know more about us. All we hope to do is to make our girls fine, strong women when they get older, like all the great brave women that we read about in history. They've all been women who loved the home, and all it means—and the fire is the great symbol of the home. It was fire that made it possible for people to have real homes."
"I've read lots and lots of things about fire," said Bessie. "Longfellow, and Tennyson, and other poets."
But then her face darkened suddenly.
"It was fire that got me into trouble, though," she said. "The fire that Jake Hoover used to set the woodshed afire."
"That was because he was misusing the fire, Bessie. Fire is a great servant. It's the most wonderful thing man ever did—learning to make a fire, and tend it, and control it. Have you heard what it says in the Fire-Maker's Desire? But, of course, you haven't. You haven't been at a Council Fire yet. Listen:
| "For I will tend, |
| As my fathers have tended |
| And my father's fathers |
| Since Time began |
| The Fire that is called |
| The love of man for man— |
| The love of man for God." |