But while I have been recounting these remarks, I have wandered far from my original subject, and left my poor log-house quite in an unfinished state.  At last I was told it was in a habitable condition, and I was soon engaged in all the bustle and fatigue attendant on removing our household goods.  We received all the assistance we required from ------, who is ever ready and willing to help us.  He laughed, and called it a “moving bee;” I said it was a “fixing bee;” and my husband said it was a “settling bee;” I know we were unsettled enough till it was over.  What a din of desolation is a small house, or any house under such circumstances.  The idea of chaos must have been taken from a removal or a setting to rights, for I suppose the ancients had their flitting, as the Scotch call it, as well as the moderns.

Various were the valuable articles of crockery-ware that perished in their short but rough journey through the woods.  Peace to their manes.  I had a good helper in my Irish maid, who soon roused up famous fires, and set the house in order.

We have now got quite comfortably settled, and I shall give you a description of our little dwelling.  What is finished is only a part of the original plan; the rest must be added next spring, or fall, as circumstances may suit.

A nice small sitting-room with a store closet, a kitchen, pantry, and bed-chamber form the ground floor; there is a good upper floor that will make three sleeping rooms.

“What a nut-shell!” I think I hear you exclaim.  So it is at present; but we purpose adding a handsome frame front as soon as we can get boards from the mill, which will give us another parlour, long hall, and good spare bed-room.  The windows and glass door of our present sitting-room command pleasant lake-views to the west and south.  When the house is completed, we shall have a verandah in front; and at the south side, which forms an agreeable addition in the summer, being used as a sort of outer room, in which we can dine, and have the advantage of cool air, protected from the glare of the sunbeams.  The Canadians call these verandahs “stoups.”  Few houses, either log or frame, are without them.  The pillars look extremely pretty, wreathed with the luxuriant hop-vine, mixed with the scarlet creeper and “morning glory,” the American name for the most splendid of major convolvuluses.  These stoups are really a considerable ornament, as they conceal in a great measure the rough logs, and break the barn-like form of the building.

Our parlour is warmed by a handsome Franklin stove with brass gallery, and fender.  Our furniture consists of a brass-railed sofa, which serves upon occasion for a bed, Canadian painted chairs, a stained pine table, green and white curtains, and a handsome Indian mat that covers the floor.  One side of the room is filled up with our books.  Some large maps and a few good prints nearly conceal the rough walls, and form the decoration of our little dwelling.  Our bed-chamber is furnished with equal simplicity.  We do not, however, lack comfort in our humble home; and though it is not exactly such as we could wish, it is as good as, under existing circumstances, we could have.