CHAPTER XXII
THE FIRE
Now, Fortune, do thy worst! For many years,
Thou, with relentless and unsparing hand,
Hast sternly pour'd on our devoted heads
The poison'd phials of thy fiercest wrath.
The early part of the winter of 1837, a year never to be forgotten
in the annals of Canadian history, was very severe. During the
month of February, the thermometer often ranged from eighteen to
twenty-seven degrees below zero. Speaking of the coldness of one
particular day, a genuine brother Jonathan remarked, with charming
simplicity, that it was thirty degrees below zero that morning, and
it would have been much colder if the thermometer had been longer.
The morning of the seventh was so intensely cold that everything
liquid froze in the house. The wood that had been drawn for the
fire was green, and it ignited too slowly to satisfy the shivering
impatience of women and children; I vented mine in audibly grumbling
over the wretched fire, at which I in vain endeavoured to thaw
frozen bread, and to dress crying children.
It so happened that an old friend, the maiden lady before alluded
to, had been staying with us for a few days. She had left us for
a visit to my sister, and as some relatives of hers were about to
return to Britain by the way of New York, and had offered to convey
letters to friends at home, I had been busy all the day before
preparing a packet for England.
It was my intention to walk to my sister's with this packet,
directly the important affair of breakfast had been discussed;
but the extreme cold of the morning had occasioned such delay
that it was late before the breakfast-things were cleared away.
After dressing, I found the air so keen that I could not venture
out without some risk to my nose, and my husband kindly volunteered
to go in my stead.
I had hired a young Irish girl the day before. Her friends were only
just located in our vicinity, and she had never seen a stove until
she came to our house. After Moodie left, I suffered the fire to die
away in the Franklin stove in the parlour, and went into the kitchen
to prepare bread for the oven.
The girl, who was a good-natured creature, had heard me complain
bitterly of the cold, and the impossibility of getting the green
wood to burn, and she thought that she would see if she could not
make a good fire for me and the children, against my work was done.
Without saying one word about her intention, she slipped out through
a door that opened from the parlour into the garden, ran round to
the wood-yard, filled her lap with cedar chips, and, not knowing
the nature of the stove, filled it entirely with the light wood.
