To do it without trying,--accidentally and unwillingly,--that, of
course, is a thing for which any fool is fit.  You knock out the
ashes from your pipe on a fallen log; you toss the end of a match
into a patch of grass, green on top, but dry as punk underneath; you
scatter the dead brands of an old fire among the moss,--a
conflagration is under way before you know it.

A fire in the woods is one thing; a comfort and a joy.  Fire in the
woods is another thing; a terror, an uncontrollable fury, a burning
shame.

But the lighting up of a proper fire, kindly, approachable,
serviceable, docile, is a work of intelligence.  If, perhaps, you
have to do it in the rain, with a single match, it requires no
little art and skill.

There is plenty of wood everywhere, but not a bit to burn.  The
fallen trees are waterlogged.  The dead leaves are as damp as grief.
The charred sticks that you find in an old fireplace are absolutely
incombustible.  Do not trust the handful of withered twigs and
branches that you gather from the spruce-trees.  They seem dry, but
they are little better for your purpose than so much asbestos.  You
make a pile of them in some apparently suitable hollow, and lay a
few larger sticks on top.  Then you hastily scratch your solitary
match on the seat of your trousers and thrust it into the pile of
twigs.  What happens?  The wind whirls around in your stupid little
hollow, and the blue flame of the sulphur spirts and sputters for an
instant, and then goes out.  Or perhaps there is a moment of
stillness; the match flares up bravely; the nearest twigs catch
fire, crackling and sparkling; you hurriedly lay on more sticks; but
the fire deliberately dodges them, creeps to the corner of the pile
where the twigs are fewest and dampest, snaps feebly a few times,
and expires in smoke.  Now where are you?  How far is it to the
nearest match?

If you are wise, you will always make your fire before you light it.
Time is never saved by doing a thing badly.