As I have been led away, for some years, following poor Indian in his
belief, life and death, and in doing so have wandered from my story, I
will now return to the second or third year of our settlement. I
described how the body of our second house was made, and the roof put on.
I now look at its interior. The lower floor was made of whitewood boards,
in their rough state, nailed down. The upper floor was laid with the same
kind of boards, though they were not nailed When they shrunk they could
be driven together, to close the cracks. The chimney was what we called a
"stick" or "Dutch chimney." The way it was built; two crooked sticks, six
inches wide and four inches thick, were taken for arms; the foot of these
sticks were placed on the inner edge or top of the second log of the
house, and the upper ends laid against the front beam of the chamber
floor. These sticks or arms were about six feet apart at the mouth of the
chimney. Father cut a green black oak and sawed off some bolts, took a
froe, that he brought from York State, and rived out shakes three inches
wide and about an inch thick. Of these and clay he laid up the chimney.
It started from the arms and the chamber beam. After it got up a little
it was like laying up a pen. He spread on some clay, then laid on four
sticks and pressed them into the clay, then spread on clay again,
covering the sticks entirely. In this way our chimney was built, and its
size, at the top, was about two by four feet. It proved to be quite a
good and safe chimney.

[Illustration: "THE HOUSE BUILT 1836."]

The last thing before retiring for the night, after the fire had burned
low and the big coals were covered with ashes, was to look up chimney and
see if it had taken fire. If it had, and was smoking on the inside,