Page:Anne Bradstreet and her time.djvu/206

190 naturally remained in the town, and the new house, the admiration of all and the envy of a few discontented spirits, was watched as it grew, by its mistress, who must have rejoiced that at last some prospect of permanence lay before her. The log house in which she waited, probably had not more than four rooms, at most, and forced them to a crowding which her ample English life had made doubly distasteful. She had a terror of fire and with reason, for while still at Cambridge her father's family had had in 1632 the narrowest of escapes, recorded by Winthrop in his Journal: "About this time Mr. Dudley, his house, at Newtown, was preserved from burning down, and all his family from being destroyed by gunpowder, by a marvellous deliverance—the hearth of the hall chimney burning all night upon a principal beam, and store of powder being near, and not discovered till they arose in the morning, and then it began to flame out."

The thatch of the early house, which were of logs filled in with clay, was always liable to take fire, the chimneys being of logs and often not clayed at the top. Dudley had warned against this carelessness in the first year of their coming, writing: "In our new town, intended this summer to be builded, we have ordered, that no man there shall build his chimney with wood, nor cover his house with thatch, which was readily assented unto; for that divers houses since our arrival (the fire always beginning in the wooden chimneys), and some English wigwams, which have taken fire in the roofs covered with thatch or boughs. With every precaution, there was still constant dread of fire, and Anne must have rejoiced in