“Come here,” he called after a while, “we will practice a little philosophy. That means keeping one’s mouth shut, lying on one’s stomach and thinking.”

He struck a match and applied it to the paper and wood in the fireplace, in front of which he was lying. The flame leapt up; he poked and blew the fire with great skill. I lay down near him on the ragged carpet. He stared into the flames, which drew my attention as well, and we lay silent for perhaps a whole hour stretched out in front of the flaring wood fire. We watched it flame and roar, die down and flicker up again, until finally it settled down into a subdued glow.