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ng a fire from the top.' Most servants do this. They also have two utterly erroneous ideas about making up a low fire: first, that the more fuel is put on the better; secondly, that after putting coal on it is desirable to stir the fire. As a matter of fact, when a fire is low, the addition of fuel will often put it out altogether, and the addition of much fuel is almost certain to do so; and in every case the time to stir the fire (when low) is before coals are put on, not after. Generally it is well, when a fire is low, to stir it deftly, so as to bring together the well-burning parts, and then to wait a little, till they begin to glow more brightly; then a few coals may be put on, and after awhile the fire may again be stirred and some more coals put on it. When a low fire has been unwisely treated by being coaled too freely, and the fresh fuel uselessly stirred, it is generally the case that the only chance for the fire is leaving it alone. Susan does this when she puts the poker across the top bar, and unconsciously she retains the old superstition that, by thus making the sign of the cross over the fire, she sends away the evil beings, sprites, or
whatever they may have been, which were extinguishing it.
That letting the sun shine on a fire puts it out is not, like the other (in its real origin, at any rate), a superstition, but simply an illusion. A correspondent wrote to me that it is believed in by nine persons out of ten; but in this its like all other wrong beliefs. Scientific methods of inquiry and reasoning are followed by fewer than ten in a hundred; and although nowadays the views of science are accepted more widely than in olden times, this is simply because science has shown its power by material conquests,t
Not to take any more scientific instances, of which perhaps I have already said enough, let us consider the case of presentiments of death or misfortune. Here, in the first place, the coincidences which have been recorded are not so remarkable as might at first sight appear, simply because such presentiments are very common indeed. A certain not unusual condition of health, the pressure of not uncommon difficulties or dangers, depression arising from atmospheric and other
I do not think that my friend Professor Tomlinson's experiments on the burning of candles in sunlight and in the dark would be regarded by all as decisively showing that sunlight does not interfere with combustion, though, rightly apprehended, they go near to prove. this. But a prior considerations show conclusively that though by warming the air around a fire the sun's rays may, in some slight degree (after a considerable time), affect the progress of combustion, they cannot possibly put the fire out in the sense in which they are commonly supposed to do so; in fact, a fire would probably burn somewhat longer in a room well warmed by a summer sun than in a room from which the solar rays were excluded. (The difference would be very slight.)
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