Page:Anne Bradstreet and her time.djvu/348

332 by many, pursued his quiet way, thankful to be safely at home again with his head in its proper place, and his wife rejoiced over him in various poems which celebrated the letters he wrote, and every detail of his coming and going.

The summer of 1666 brought one of the sharpest trials her life had ever known, the destruction of her house by fire taking place in July. Each change of location to one of her tenacious affections and deep love of home, had been a sharp wrench, and she required long familiarity to reconcile her to new conditions. Though the first and greatest change from England to America would seem to have rendered all others trivial and not to be regarded, she had shrank from each as it came, submitting by force of will, but unreconciled till years had past. In Andover she had allowed herself to take firm root, certain that from this point she would never be dislodged, and the house had gradually become filled not only with treasured articles of furniture and adornments, but with the associations to which she always clung. There were family portraits and heirlooms brought from the old home in Lincolnshire; a library of nearly eight hundred volumes, many of them rare editions difficult to replace, as well as her own special books and papers.

For these last there was no hope of renewal. Many of them were the work of her early womanhood; others held the continuation of her Roman Monarchy; small loss to the world at large, but the destruction of a work which had beguiled many hours of the bodily suffering from which she was seldom free. The second edition of her poems, published after her death,