small bedrooms, which were divided by plank partitions. Pantry or
storeroom there was none; some rough shelves in the kitchen, and a deal
cupboard n a corner of the parlour, being the extent of our accommodations
in that way.

Our servant, Mary Tate, was busy scrubbing out the parlour and bedroom;
but the kitchen, and the sleeping-room off it, were still knee-deep in
chips, and filled with the carpenter's bench and tools, and all our
luggage. Such as it was, it was a palace when compared to Old Satan's log
hut, or the miserable cabin we had wintered in during the severe winter of
1833, and I regarded it with complacency as my future home.

While we were standing outside the building, conversing with my husband, a
young gentleman, of the name of Morgan, who had lately purchased land in
that vicinity, went into the kitchen to light his pipe at the stove, and,
with true backwood carelessness, let the hot cinder fall among the dry
chips that strewed the floor. A few minutes after, the whole mass was in a
blaze, and it was not without great difficulty that Moodie and Mr. R____
succeeded in putting out the fire. Thus were we nearly deprived of our
home before we had taken up our abode in it.

The indifference to the danger of fire in a country where most of the
dwellings are composed of inflammable materials, is truly astonishing.
Accustomed to see enormous fires blazing on every hearth-stone, and to
sleep in front of these fires, his bedding often riddled with holes made
by hot particles of wood flying out during the night, and igniting beneath
his very nose, the sturdy backwoodsman never dreads an enemy in the
element that he is used to regard as his best friend. Yet what awful
accidents, what ruinous calamities arise, out of this criminal negligence,
both to himself and others!