Annals of our ancestors; one hundred and fifty years of history in the ...

194
ANNALS OF OUR ANCESTORS
wondered how it would all come out. I recalled the events
of the early morning of the previous day. I had been in the
shed kitchen and had seen neither fire nor smoke. The stove,
it is true, was the old one of our grandfather, one of the very
first brought out from Cincinnati. It was what was called
a step stove; beneath the top step was an oven. It may have
been faulty some way, but we were not aware of it, and it was
the general belief that the fire was incendiary. That old John
Wolf stove upon which I learned to spell "Cincinnati" perished,
and as a momument of our grandfather's progressive spirit
it was no more. He had an expression I recall here for the
thought that the present is better than the past; it was "Better
now than it was last," and he tried to make this come true in
spite of his peculiar obstacles.
The old cupboard made for our parents' first cabin also
perished in the kitchen, together with mother's first table and
her pans and iron ware. Brother Will's gun burned in there
and gave a last salute as it was overcome in the conflagration.
The cellar was a sad ruin; the forty milk crocks were melted
together in rows on the cellar floor, with some butter mother
had packed for winter use. Outside the lovely trees and vines
were destroyed — the "trees of heaven," the coffee nut tree,
the grapevine bower were withered and killed. I seemed to
see what Sister Ida had described to me — the flames creeping
around between the clean white banisters of the upper porch
— and I did not wonder that she fled from the cruel sight.
Our hearts were indeed musing and sad as we drove from the
funeral pyre of our childhood home.
The cause of the fire we could not divine, although it was
the opinion of the neighbors that "Nigger Bob" had done the
deed. It is true that he had never ceased to be desperately
angry that father had sent him from the place with his drunken
riotings and wife-beatings. The neighbors had seen him on
the road after dark the night before, and he seems to have
disappeared after that. It looks rather possible and plausible
that they may have both camped in our hay mow the night
before, and when we started for the city they began their work
of destruction. I know of no better place to tell of Bob and