a dozen long-metre psalm tunes such as the Judge set for so many years
in meeting.

“Forte-pianers” were imported to America, as were other musical
instruments. It is said the first one brought to New England was in
1785 by John Brown for his daughter Sarah, afterwards Mrs. Herreshoff.
It is still possessed by Miss Herreshoff, of Bristol, R. I. The first
brought to “the Cape” was a Clementi of the date 1790, and found for
many years a home in Falmouth. It is in perfect preservation, a dainty
little inlaid box lying upon a slender low table, with tiny shelves
for the music books, and a tiny little painted rack to hold the music
sheets, and a pedal fit for the foot of a doll. It is now owned by
Miss Frances Morse, of Worcester, Mass. An old Broadwood piano, once
owned by the venerable Dr. Sweetser, may be seen at the rooms of the
Worcester Society of Antiquity; and still another, a Clementi, at the
Essex Institute in Salem.

By the beginning of this century piano-playing became a more common
accomplishment, especially in the large towns, though General Oliver
said that in 1810, among the six thousand families in Boston, there
were not fifty pianos. Rev. Manasseh Cutler writes in 1801, from
Washington, of a young friend:--

 She has been educated at the best schools in Baltimore and Alexandria.
 She does not converse much, but is very modest and agreeable. She
 plays with great skill on the Forte Piano which she always accompanies
 with the most delightful voice, and is frequently joined in the vocal
 part by her mother. Mr. King has an excellent Forte-Piano which is
 connected with an organ placed under it, which she plays and fills
 with her feet, while her fingers are employed upon the Forte-Piano.
 On Sunday evenings she constantly plays Psalm music. Miss Anna plays
 Denmark remarkably well. But the most of the psalm tunes our gentlemen
 prefer are the old ones such as Old Hundred, Canterbury, which
 you would be delighted to hear on the Forte-Piano assisted by the
 Organ. Miss Anna gave us some good music this evening, particularly
 the Wayworn Traveller, Ma Chere Amie, The Tea, The Twins of Latma
 (somewhat similar to Indian Chief) Eliza, Lucy or Selims Complaint.
 These are among my favourites.

In February, 1800, Eliza Southgate Bowne wrote thus in Boston:--

 In the morning I am going to look at some Instruments; however we got
 one picked out that I imagine we shall take, 150 dollars, a charming
 toned one and not made in this country.

In June she said enthusiastically of her “Instrument:”--

 I am learning my 12th tune Oh Octavia, I almost worship my
 Instrument,--it reciprocates my joys and sorrows, and is my bosom
 companion. How I long to have you return! I have hardly attempted
 to sing since you went away. I am sure I shall not dare to when you
 return. I must enjoy my triumph while you are absent; my musical
 talents will be dim when compared with the lustre of yours.

The most universal accomplishment of colonial women was the making
of samplers, if, indeed, anything could be termed an accomplishment
which was so rigidly and prosaically part of their education. I can
well imagine the disgrace it would have been to any little miss in
her teens a century ago not to be able to show a carefully designed
and wrought sampler. On these samplers were displayed the alphabet,
sometimes in various shaped letters--thus did she learn to mark neatly
her household linen; bands of conventional designs, of flowers, of
geometrical patterns--thus was she taught to embroider muslin caps
and kerchiefs; and there were gorgeous flowers and strange buildings,
and domestic scenes, and pastoral views, birds that perched as large
as cows, and roses that were larger than either; and last and best of
all (and often of much satisfaction to the genealogist), there was
her name and her age, and sometimes her place of birth, and withal a
pious verse as a motto for this housewifely shield. Of all the relics
of old-time life which have come to us, none are more interesting than
the samplers. Happily, many of them _have_ come to us; worked with
wiry enduring crewels and silk on strong linen canvas, they speak down
through the century of the little, useful, willing hands that worked
them; of the tidy sempstresses and housewives of those simple domestic
days. We know little of the daughters of the Pilgrims, but Lora
Standish has sent to us a prim little message of her piety, and a faded
testimony of her skill, that makes her seem dear to us:--

            Lora Standish is My Name.
    Lord Guide my heart that I may do thy Will
    Also fill my hands with such convenient skill
    As will conduce to Virtue void of Shame,
    And I will give the Glory to Thy Name.

A more ambitious kind of needlework took the form of what were known as
mourning pieces. These were regarded with deepest affection, for were
they not a token of loving remembrance? They bore stiff presentments
of funeral urns, with drooping willows, or a monument with a bowed and
weeping figure. Often the names of dead members of the family were
worked upon the monument. A still more ambitious sampler bore a design
known as The Tree of Life. A stiffly branched tree was sparingly hung
with apples labelled with the names of the virtues of humanity, such
as Love, Honor, Truth, Modesty, Silence. A white-winged angel on one
side of this tree watered the roots with a very realistic watering-pot,
and was balanced with exactness, as were evenly adjusted all good
embroidery designs of that day, by an inky-black Satan who bore a
pitchfork of colossal proportions and a tail as long as a kite’s, and
so heavy that he could scarce have dragged it along the ground--much
less with it have flown.

For many years a favorite and much praised accomplishment was the
cutting of paper in ornamental designs. This art was ambitiously called
Papyrotamia, and it was of special usefulness in its application to
watch-papers, a favorite lover’s token of the day. The watch proper
at that time was separate and removable from its case, which was of
gold, silver, shagreen, or lacquer. Of course the watch did not fit
closely into the case, and watch-papers were placed within to serve
as a cushion to prevent jar and wear; sometimes the case would hold
several. Artistic and grotesque taste could be used in the manufacture
of these tokens of regard. I have seen them cut in various open-work
designs from gilt and silver paper, embroidered in hair, painted in
water colors. One I have has two turtle-doves billing over two hearts,
and surrounded by a tiny wreath; another, embroidered on net, has the
words “God is Love;” another has a moss rose and the words “Rejoice
and blossom as a rose.” Another bears a funeral urn, and is evidently
_in memoriam_. Still another, a heart and arrows, and the sentimental
legend “Kill me for I die of love.” Jefferson, writing as a young man,
bitterly deplores his inadvertent tearing of watch-papers which had
been cut for him by his beloved Belinda. Watch and watch-papers had
been accidentally soaked in water, and when he attempted to remove the
papers, he says, “My cursed fingers gave them such a rent as I fear I
shall never get over. I would have cried bitterly, but that I thought
it beneath the dignity of a man.” And he trusts the fair Becca will
give him another paper of her cutting, which, though but a plain round
one, he will esteem more than the nicest in the world cut by other
hands.

Nothing can be more pathetic than the thoughtful survey of the crude
and often cumbersome and ludicrous attempts at decorative art, through
which the stunted and cramped love of the beautiful found expression,
until our own day, in country homes. The dreary succession of
hair-work, feather-work, wax flowers, shell-work, the crystallization
with various domestic minerals and gums of dried leaves and grasses,
vied with yarn and worsted monstrosities, and bewildering patchwork.
Occasionally some bold feminine spirit, made inventive through artistic
longing, gave birth to a novel, though too often grotesque form of
decoration.

A most interesting symbol of exquisite neatness, unbounded patience,
and blind groping for artistic expression was Rhoda Baker’s
“Leather-Works.” Rhoda Baker lived in a small Rhode Island village,
which was dull at its birth and slow of growth and progress. She had a
nature so timid, so repelling, and so wholly introspective, that, after
nearly fifty years of shy and even unwilling “keeping company” with
a preaching elder of the time,--a saint, almost a mystic,--she died
without ever having given to the quaint, thin, pleasant-faced, awkward
man, one word of encouragement to his equally timid, his hinting and
halting love-making. During those patient years of warm hopes, but
most scanty fruition, he had built a house on an island which he owned
in Narragansett Bay, with a window where his beloved Rhoda could sit
sewing when she became his wife, and watch him happily rowing across
the Bay to her; but great lilac bushes grew up unchecked, and shaded
and finally hid the window at which Rhoda never sat to welcome her
husband-lover. After her death the Elder so grieved that he had naught
to remind him and speak to him of his beloved, that he boldly decided
to name his boat for her; but as he could not conscientiously say she
had ever encouraged him by word or look in his incipient love-making,
and he must be strictly honest and chivalrously respectful to her
memory, he painted upon the boat in black letters this truthful yet
dimly consoling legend, “Rhoda Wouldnt.” Poor Elder! Many a time had he
ventured a-courting, and slowly entering, after his unanswered assault
upon the door-knocker, had found the kitchen of this elusive Rhoda
vacant,--_but her rocking-chair was slowly rocking_,--so he sadly left
the deserted room, the unwelcoming house.

He sacrificed his life to his affection for his dead love. He had all
his days a fear, a premonition, that he should lose his life through
a horse, so he never rode or drove, but walked, rowed, or sailed, and
lived on an island to escape his dreaded doom. When Rhoda’s brother
died in a distant town, the Elder was bidden to the funeral, and he
honored his Rhoda’s memory by his attendance, and he had to ride there.
As he left the house of mourning, a fractious young colt ran away with
him, threw him out of the wagon, and broke his neck.

His sweetheart’s “Leather-Works” still exist, to keep fresh this New
England romance. I saw them last summer in the attic of the Town
Hall. Rhoda left them in her will to her church, and they are now the
property of the village church-guild. The guild is vigorous and young,
so can bear this ancient maiden’s bequest with cheerful carriage and
undaunted spirits. The leather-works are many and ponderous. One is a
vast trellis (which may have been originally two clothes-horses), hung
with elaborately twisted and tendrilled vines, bearing minutely veined
leaves and various counterfeit and imaginary fruits. The bunches of
grapes are made of home-cast leaden bullets, or round stones, covered
dexterously and with unparalleled neatness and imperceptible stitches
with pieces of old kid gloves or thin leather; and to each a common
dress-hook is attached. The stem of the bunch has corresponding eyes,
to each of which a grape is hung. By this ingenious means the bunches
of grapes could be neatly dusted each week, and kept in repair, as
well as easily shaped. On this trellis hung also Roses of Sharon, a
mystic flower which Rhoda’s sister Eunice invented, and which had a
deep spiritual signification, as well as extraordinary outline and
intricate composition. Every leaf, every grape, every monstrous fruit,
every flower of these Leather-Works, speaks of the æsthetic longing,
the vague mysticism, the stifled repression, of Rhoda Baker’s life;
and they speak equally of the Elder’s love. It was he who moulded the
bullets, and searched on the shore for carefully rounded stones; and
he who haunted the country saddlers and repair-shops for waste strips
of leather, which he often deposited in the silent kitchen by the
rocking-chair, sure of grateful though unspoken thanks. Many a pair
of his old boot-tops figures as glorious vine leaves; and he even
tanned and dressed skins to supply swiftly the artist’s materials when
genius burned. It was he who tenderly unhooked the grapes and pears,
the fruits of Eden and the Roses of Sharon, when the trellis was
transported to the Town Hall, and he reverently placed the trophies of
his true love’s skill and genius in place in their new home. I always
rather resent the fact that Rhoda did not bequeath the Leather-Works
to him, when I think of the vast and almost sacred pleasure he would
have had in them; as well as when I remember the share he had in the
preparations for their manufacture. And the Leather-Works speak still
another lesson, as do many of the household grotesqueries seen in New
England, a lesson of sympathy, almost of beauty, to those who “read
between the lines, the finer grace of unfulfilled designs.”

                              CHAPTER X.

                         DAUGHTERS OF LIBERTY.

We are constantly hearing the statement reiterated, that the Society
of the Daughters of the American Revolution was the first association
of women ever formed for patriotic purpose. This assertion shows a
lamentable ignorance of Revolutionary history; for a century and a
quarter ago, before the War of the Revolution, patriotic societies
of women were formed all over the country, and called Daughters of
Liberty. Our modern bands should be distinguished by being called the
first patriotic-hereditary societies of women.

As we approach Revolutionary days, it is evident that the women of all
the colonies were as deeply stirred as were the men at the constant
injustice and growing tyranny of the British government, and they
were not slow in openly averring their abhorrence and revolt against
this injustice. Their individual action consisted in the wearing
only of garments of homespun manufacture; their concerted exertions
in gathering in patriotic bands to spin, and the signing of compacts
to drink no more of the taxed tea, that significant emblem of British
injustice and American revolt.

The earliest definite notice of any gathering of Daughters of Liberty
was in Providence in 1766, when seventeen young ladies met at the
house of Deacon Ephraim Bowen and spun all day long for the public
benefit, and assumed the name Daughters of Liberty. The next meeting
the little band had so increased in numbers that it had to meet in
the Court House. At about the same time another band of daughters
gathered at Newport, and an old list of the members has been preserved.
It comprised all the beautiful and brilliant young girls for which
Newport was at that time so celebrated. As one result of this
patriotic interest, the President and the first graduating class of
Brown University, then called Rhode Island College, were clothed, at
Commencement in 1769, in fabrics of American homespun manufacture. The
senior class of the previous year at Harvard had been similarly dressed.

These little bands of patriotic women gathered far and wide throughout
New England. At one meeting seventy linen wheels were employed. In
Newbury, Beverly, Rowley, Ipswich, spinning matches were held. Let me
show how the day was spent. I quote from the _Boston News-Letter_:--

 Rowley. A number of thirty-three respectable ladies of the town met
 at sunrise [this was in July] with their wheels to spend the day at
 the house of the Rev’d Jedidiah Jewell in the laudable design of a
 spinning match. At an hour before sunset, the ladies then appearing
 neatly dressed, principally in homespun, a polite and generous repast
 of American production was set for their entertainment, after which
 being present many spectators of both sexes, Mr. Jewell delivered a
 profitable discourse from Romans xii. 2: Not slothful in business,
 fervent in spirit, serving the Lord.

You will never find matters of church and patriotism very far apart in
New England; so I learn that when they met in Ipswich the Daughters
of Liberty were also entertained with a sermon. The Newbury patriots
drank Liberty Tea, and listened to a sermon on the text Proverbs xxxi.
19. Another text used at one of these gatherings was from Exodus xxxv.
25: “And all the women that were wise-hearted did spin with their
hands.”

The women of Virginia were early in the patriotic impulses, yet few
proofs of their action or determination remain. In a Northern paper,
the _Boston Evening Post_ of January 31, 1770, we read this Toast to
the Southerners:--

NEW TOASTS.

 The patriotic ladies of Virginia, who have nobly distinguished
 themselves by appearing in the Manufactures of America, and may those
 of the Massachusetts be laudably ambitious of not being outdone by
 Virginians.

 The wise and virtuous part of the Fair Sex in Boston and other Towns,
 who being at length sensible that by the consumption of Teas they are
 supporting the Commissioners & other Tools of Power, have voluntarily
 agreed not to give or receive any further Entertainments of that Kind,
 until those Creatures, together with the Boston Standing Army, are
 removed, and the Revenue Acts repealed.

 May the disgrace which a late venal & corrupt Assembly has brought
 upon a Sister Colony, be wiped away by a Dissolution.

This is pretty plain language, but it could not be strange to the
public ear, for ere this Boston women had been appealed to in the press
upon this same subject.

In the _Massachusetts Gazette_, as early as November 9, 1767, these
lines show the indignant and revolutionary spirit of the time:

    Young ladies in town and those that live round
      Let a friend at this season advise you.
    Since money’s so scarce and times growing worse,
      Strange things may soon hap and surprise you.
    First then throw aside your high top knots of pride
      Wear none but your own country linen.
    Of economy boast. Let your pride be the most
      To show cloaths of your own make and spinning.
    What if homespun they say is not quite so gay
      As brocades, yet be not in a passion,
    For when once it is known this is much wore in town,
      One and all will cry out ’Tis the fashion.
    And as one and all agree that you’ll not married be
      To such as will wear London factory
    But at first sight refuse, till e’en such you do choose
      As encourage our own manufactory.

Soon these frequent appeals, and the influence of the public and
earnest revolt of the Sons of Liberty, resulted in a public compact of
Boston women. It is thus recorded in the Boston press:--

 The _Boston Evening Post_:--

  Monday, February 12, 1770.

 The following agreement has lately been come into by upwards of 300
 Mistresses of Families in this Town; in which Number the Ladies of the
 highest rank and Influence, that could be waited upon in so short a
 Time, are included.

  BOSTON, January 31, 1770.

 At a time when our invaluable Rights and Privileges are attacked in
 an unconstitutional and most alarming Manner, and as we find we are
 reproached for not being so ready as could be desired, to lend our
 Assistance, we think it our Duty perfectly to concur with the true
 Friends of Liberty in all Measures they have taken to save this abused
 Country from Ruin and Slavery. And particularly, we join with the very
 respectable Body of Merchants and other Inhabitants of this Town, who
 met in Faneuil Hall the 23d of this Instant, in their Resolutions,
 totally to abstain from the Use of Tea; And as the greatest Part of
 the Revenue arising by Virtue of the late Acts, is produced from the
 Duty paid upon Tea, which Revenue is wholly expended to support the
 American Board of Commissioners; We, the Subscribers, do strictly
 engage, that we will totally abstain from the Use of that Article,
 (Sickness excepted) not only in our respective Families, but that we
 will absolutely refuse it, if it should be offered to us upon any
 Occasion whatsoever. This Agreement we cheerfully come into, as we
 believe the very distressed Situation of our Country requires it, and
 we do hereby oblige ourselves religiously to observe it, till the late
 Revenue Acts are repealed.

_Massachusetts Gazette_, and the _Boston Weekly News-Letter_:--

  February 15, 1770.

 We hear that a large Number of the Mistresses of Families, some
 of whom are Ladies of the highest Rank, in this Town, have signed
 an Agreement against drinking Tea (Bohea it is supposed, tho’ not
 specified); they engage not only to abstain from it in their Families
 (Sickness excepted) but will absolutely refuse it, if it should be
 offered to them upon any Occasion; This Agreement to be religiously
 observed till the Revenue Acts are repealed.

It was natural that, in that hotbed of rebellion, young girls should
not be behind their brothers, fathers, and their mothers in open avowal
of their revolt. Soon the young ladies published this declaration:--

 We, the daughters of those patriots who have and do now appear for the
 public interest, and in that principally regard their posterity--as
 such, do with pleasure engage with them in denying ourselves the
 drinking of foreign tea in hopes to frustrate a plan which tends to
 deprive the whole community of all that is valuable as life.

One dame thus declared her principles and motives in blank verse:--

    Farewell the teaboard with its gaudy equipage
    Of cups and saucers, creambucket, sugar tongs,
    The pretty tea-chest, also lately stored
    With Hyson, Congo and best double-fine.
    Full many a joyous moment have I sat by ye
    Hearing the girls tattle, the old maids talk scandal,
    And the spruce coxcomb laugh at--maybe--nothing.
    Though now detestable
    Because I am taught (and I believe it true)
    Its use will fasten slavish chains upon my country
    To reign triumphant in America.

When little Anna Green Winslow bought a hat in February, 1771, she
bought one of “white holland with the feathers sewed on in a most
curious manner, white and unsulleyed as the falling snow. As I am
as we say a daughter of Liberty I chuse to wear as much of our own
manufactory as posible.”

Mercy Warren wrote to John Winthrop, in fine satire upon this
determination of American women to give up all imports from Great
Britain except the necessaries of life, a list of the articles a woman
would deem it imperative to retain:--

                    An inventory clear
    Of all she needs Lamira offers here.
    Nor does she fear a rigid Catos frown
    When she lays by the rich embroidered gown
    And modestly compounds for just enough--
    Perhaps some dozen of more slighty stuff.
    With lawns and lutestrings, blond and mecklin laces,
    Fringes and jewels, fans and tweezer cases,
    Gay cloaks and hats of every shape and size,
    Scrafs, cardinals and ribbons of all dyes.
    With ruffles stamped, and aprons of tambour,
    Tippets and handkerchiefs at least three score;
    With finest muslins that far India boasts,
    And the choice herbage from Chinesan coast.
    (But while the fragrant hyson leaf regales
    Who’ll wear the home-spun produce of the vales?
    For if ’twould save the nation from the curse
    Of standing troops--or name a plague still worse,
    Few can this choice delicious draught give up,
    Though all Medea’s poison fill the cup.)
    Add feathers, furs, rich satins and ducapes
    And head dresses in pyramidal shapes,
    Sideboards of plate and porcelain profuse,
    With fifty dittos that the ladies use.
    So weak Lamira and her wants are few,
    Who can refuse, they’re but the sex’s due.
    In youth indeed an antiquated page
    Taught us the threatening of a Hebrew page
    Gainst wimples, mantles, curls and crisping pins,
    But rank not these among our modern sins,
    For when our manners are well understood
    What in the scale is stomacher or hood?
    Tis true we love the courtly mien and air
    The pride of dress and all the debonair,
    Yet Clara quits the more dressed negligé
    And substitutes the careless polanê
    Until some fair one from Britannia’s court
    Some jaunty dress or newer taste import,
    This sweet temptation could not be withstood,
    Though for her purchase paid her father’s blood.

After the war had really begun, Mrs. John Adams, writing July 31, 1777,
tells of an astonishing action of Boston women, plainly the result of
all these revolutionary tea-notions:--

 There is a great scarcity of sugar and coffee, articles which the
 female part of the State is very loath to give up, especially whilst
 they consider the scarcity occasioned by the merchants having secreted
 a large quantity. There had been much rout and noise in the town for
 several weeks. Some stores had been opened by a number of people, and
 the coffee and sugar carried into the market and dealt out by pounds.
 It was rumored that an eminent stingy wealthy merchant (who is a
 bachelor) had a hogshead of coffee in his store which he refused to
 sell the committee under six shillings per pound. A number of females,
 some say a hundred, some say more, assembled with a cart and trunks,
 marched down to the warehouse and demanded the keys which he refused
 to deliver. Upon which one of them seized him by his neck and tossed
 him into the cart. Upon his finding no quarter, he delivered the keys
 when they tipped up the cart and discharged him; then opened the
 warehouse, hoisted out the coffee themselves, put into the trunks, and
 drove off. It was reported that he had personal chastisements among
 them, but this I believe was not true. A large concourse of men stood
 amazed, silent spectators of the whole transaction.

I suppose these Boston dames thought they might have coffee since they
could not have tea; and, indeed, the relative use of these two articles
in America was much changed by the Revolution. To this day much more
coffee is drunk in America, proportionately, than in England. We are
not a tea-drinking nation.

I don’t know that there were Daughters of Liberty in Philadelphia, but
Philadelphia women were just as patriotic as those of other towns. One
wrote to a British officer as follows:--

 I have retrenched every superfluous expense in my table and family.
 Tea I have not drunk since last Christmas, nor have I bought a cap or
 gown since your defeat at Lexington. I have learned to knit and am
 now making stockings of wool for my servants. In this way do I now
 throw in my mite for public good. I know this, that as free I can die
 but once, but as a slave I shall not be worthy of life. I have the
 pleasure to assure you that these are the sentiments of my sister
 Americans.

The women of the South were fired with patriotism; in Mecklenburgh and
Rowan counties, North Carolina, Daughters of Liberty found another
method of spurring patriotism. Young ladies of the most respectable
families banded together, and pledged themselves not to receive
addresses from any recreant suitors who had not obeyed the country’s
call for military service.

There was an historic tea-party also in that town of so much importance
in those days--Edenton, N. C. On October 25, 1774, fifty-one spirited
dames assembled at the residence of Mrs. Elizabeth King, and passed
resolutions commending the action of the Provincial Congress, and
declared also that they would not conform to “that Pernicious Custom of
Drinking Tea or that the aforesaid Ladys would not promote ye wear of
any manufacture from England,” until the tax was repealed.

The notice of the association is contained in the American Archives,
and runs thus:--

 Association Signed by Ladies of Edenton, North Carolina, Oct. 25,
 1774. As we cannot be indifferent on any occasion that appears
 to affect the peace and happiness of our country, and as it has
 been thought necessary for the publick good to enter into several
 particular resolves, by meeting of Members of Deputies from the
 whole Province, it is a duty that we owe not only to our near and
 dear relations and connections, but to ourselves who are essentially
 interested in their welfare, to do everything as far as lies in
 our power to testify our sincere adherence to the same, and we do
 therefore accordingly subscribe this paper as a witness of our fixed
 intentions and solemn determination to do so. Signed by fifty one
 ladies.

It is a good example of the strange notions which some historians
have of the slight value of circumstantial evidence in history,
that the names of these fifty-one ladies have not been preserved. A
few, however, are known. The president was Mrs. Penelope Barker, who
was thrice a widow, of husbands Hodgson, Crumm, and Barker. She was
high-spirited, and from her varied matrimonial experiences knew that it
was needless to be afraid of any man; so when British soldiers invaded
her stables to seize her carriage horses, she snatched the sword of one
of her husbands from the wall, with a single blow severed the reins
in the British officer’s hands, and drove her horses back into the
stables, and kept them too.

The fame of this Southern tea-party reached England, for Arthur Iredell
wrote (with the usual masculine jocularity upon feminine enterprises)
thus, on January 31, 1775, from London to his patriot brother, James
Iredell:--

 I see by the newspapers the Edenton ladies have signalized themselves
 by their protest against tea-drinking. The name of Johnston I see
 among others; are any of my sister’s relations patriotic heroines? Is
 there a female Congress at Edenton too? I hope not, for we Englishmen
 are afraid of the male Congress, but if the ladies who have ever,
 since the Amazonian era, been esteemed the most formidable enemies,
 if they, I say, should attack us, the most fatal consequence is to
 be dreaded. So dextrous in the handling of a dart, each wound they
 give is mortal; whilst we, so unhappily formed by Nature, the more we
 strive to conquer them the more are conquered! The Edenton ladies,
 conscious I suppose of this superiority on their side, by former
 experience, are willing, I imagine, to crush us into atoms by their
 omnipotency; the only security on our side to prevent the impending
 ruin that I can perceive is the probability that there are few places
 in America which possess so much female artillery as in Edenton.

Another indication of the fame of the Edenton tea-party is adduced by
Dr. Richard Dillard in his interesting magazine paper thereon. It was
rendered more public by a caricature, printed in London, a mezzotint,
entitled “A Society of Patriotic Ladies at Edenton in North Carolina.”
One lady with a gavel is evidently a man in woman’s clothing, and is
probably intended for the hated Lord North; other figures are pouring
the tea out of caddies, others are writing. This caricature may have
been brought forth in derision of an interesting tea-party picture
which still exists, and is in North Carolina, after some strange
vicissitudes in a foreign land. It is painted on glass, and the various
figures are doubtless portraits of the Edenton ladies.

It is difficult to-day to be wholly sensible of all that these Liberty
Bands meant to the women of the day. There were not, at that time,
the associations of women for concerted charitable and philanthropic
work which are so universal now. There were few established and
organized assemblies of women for church work (there had been some
praying-meetings in Whitefield’s day), and the very thought of a
woman’s society for any other than religious purposes must have been
in itself revolutionary. And we scarcely appreciate all it meant for
them to abandon the use of tea; for tea-drinking in that day meant far
more to women than it does now. Substitutes for the taxed and abandoned
exotic herb were eagerly sought and speedily offered. Liberty Tea,
Labrador Tea, and Yeopon were the most universally accepted, though
seventeen different herbs and beans were named by one author; and
patriotic prophecies were made that their use would wholly outlive that
of the Oriental drink, even could the latter be freely obtained. A
century has proved the value of these prophecies.

Liberty Tea was the most popular of these Revolutionary substitutes.
It sold for sixpence a pound. It was made from the four-leaved
loose-strife, a common-growing herb. It was pulled up whole like flax,
its stalks were stripped of the leaves and then boiled. The leaves were
put in a kettle with the liquor from the stalks and again boiled. Then
the leaves were dried in an oven. Sage and rib-wort, strawberry leaves
and currant leaves, made a shift to serve as tea. Hyperion or Labrador
Tea, much vaunted, was only raspberry leaves, but was not such a wholly
odious beverage. It was loudly praised in the patriotic public press:--

 The use of Hyperion or Labrador tea is every day coming into vogue
 among people of all ranks. The virtues of the plant or shrub from
 which this delicate Tea is gathered were first discovered by the
 Aborigines, and from them the Canadians learned them. Before the
 cession of Canada to Great Britain we knew little or nothing of
 this most excellent herb, but since we have been taught to find it
 growing all over hill and dale between the Lat. 40 and 60. It is
 found all over New England in great plenty and that of best quality,
 particularly on the banks of the Penobscot, Kennebec, Nichewannock and
 Merrimac.

                              CHAPTER XI.

                      A REVOLUTIONARY HOUSEWIFE.

We do not need to make a composite picture of the housewife of
Revolutionary days, for a very distinct account has been preserved of
one in the quaint pages of the _Remembrancer_ or diary of Christopher
Marshall, a well-to-do Quaker of Philadelphia, who was one of the
Committee of Observation of that city during the Revolutionary War.
After many entries through the year 1778, which incidentally show the
many cares of his faithful wife, and her fulfilment of these cares, the
fortunate husband thus bursts forth in her praise:--

 As I have in this memorandum taken scarcely any notice of my wife’s
 employments, it might appear as if her engagements were very trifling;
 the which is not the case but the reverse. And to do her justice
 which her services deserved, by entering them minutely, would take
 up most of my time, for this genuine reason, how that from early
 in the morning till late at night she is constantly employed in the
 affairs of the family, which for four months has been very large; for
 besides the addition to our family in the house, it is a constant
 resort of comers and goers which seldom go away with dry lips and
 hungry bellies. This calls for her constant attendance, not only to
 provide, but also to attend at getting prepared in the kitchen, baking
 our bread and pies, meat &c. and also the table. Her cleanliness
 about the house, her attendance in the orchard, cutting and drying
 apples of which several bushels have been procured; add to which her
 making of cider without tools, for the constant drink of the family,
 her seeing all our washing done, and her fine clothes and my shirts,
 the which are all smoothed by her; add to this, her making of twenty
 large cheeses, and that from one cow, and daily using with milk and
 cream, besides her sewing, knitting &c. Thus she looketh well to the
 ways of her household, and eateth not the bread of idleness; yea she
 also stretcheth out her hand, and she reacheth forth her hand to her
 needy friends and neighbors. I think she has not been above four times
 since her residence here to visit her neighbors; nor through mercy has
 she been sick for any time, but has at all times been ready in any
 affliction to me or my family as a faithful nurse and attendant both
 day and night.

Such laudatory references to the goodwife as these abound through the
_Remembrancer_.

 My tender wife keeps busily engaged and looks upon every Philadelphian
 who comes to us as a person suffering in a righteous cause; and
 entitled to partake of her hospitality which she administers with her
 labor and attendance with great freedom and alacrity....

 My dear wife meets little respite all the day, the proverb being
 verified, that Woman’s Work is never done.

 I owe my health to the vigilance, industry and care of my wife who
 really has been and is a blessing unto me. For the constant assiduity
 and press of her daily and painful labor in the kitchen, the Great
 Lord of the Household will reward her in due time.

It seems that so generous and noble a woman should have had a reward
in this world, as well as the next, for, besides her kitchen duties,
she was a “nonsuch gardner, working bravely in her garden,” and a first
class butter-maker, who constantly supplied her poor neighbors with
milk, and yet always had cream to spare for her dairy.

Far be it from me to cast even the slightest reflection, to express
the vaguest doubt, as to the industry, energy, and application of so
pious, so estimable an old gentleman as Mr. Marshall, but he was,
as he says, “easily tired”--“the little I do tires and fatigues
me”--“the grasshopper seems a burden.” So, even to our prosaic and
somewhat emancipated nineteenth century notions as to women’s rights
and their assumption of men’s duties, it does appear that so patient,
industrious, and overworked a consort might have been spared some of
the burdensome duties which devolved upon her, and which are popularly
supposed not to belong to the distaff side of the house. An elderly
milk-man might have occasionally milked the cow for that elderly weary
milkmaid. And it does seem just a little strange that a hearty old
fellow, who could eat gammons and drink punch at every occasion of
sober enjoyment and innocent revelry to which he was invited, should
let his aged spouse rise at daybreak and go to the wharves to buy loads
of wood from the bargemen; and also complacently record that the horse
would have died had not the ever-energetic wife gone out and by dint
of hard work and good management succeeded in buying in the barren city
a load of hay for provender. However, he never fails to do her justice
in commendatory words in the pages of his _Remembrancer_, thus proving
himself more thoughtful than that Yankee husband who said to a neighbor
that his wife was such a good worker and a good cook, and so pleasant
and kept everything so neat and nice around the house, that sometimes
it seemed as if he couldn’t help telling her so.

One of the important housewifely cares of Philadelphia women was their
marketing, and Madam Marshall was faithful in this duty also. We find
her attending market as early as four o’clock upon a winter’s morning.
In 1690, there were two market days weekly in Philadelphia, and nearly
all the early writers note the attendance thereat of the ladies
residing in the town. In 1744, these markets were held on Tuesday and
Friday. William Black, a travelling Virginian, wrote that year with
admiration of this custom:--

 I got to the market by 7, and had no small Satisfaction in seeing the
 pretty Creatures, the Young Ladies, traversing the place from Stall
 to Stall where they could make the best Market, some with their maid
 behind them with a Basket to carry home the Purchase, others that
 were design’d to buy but trifles, as a little fresh Butter, a Dish of
 Green Peas or the like, had Good Nature & Humility enough to be their
 own Porters. I have so much regard for the fair Sex that I imagin’d
 like the Woman of the Holy Writ some charm in touching even the Hem of
 their Garments. After I made my Market, which was one pennyworth of
 Whey and a Nosegay, I disengag’d myself.

It would appear also that a simple and appropriate garment was donned
for this homely occupation. We find Sarah Eve and others writing of
wearing a “market cloke.”

It is with a keen thrill of sympathy that we read of all the torment
that Mistress Marshall, that household saint, had to endure in the
domestic service rendered to her--or perhaps I should say through the
lack of service in her home. A special thorn in the flesh was one Poll,
a bound girl. On September 13, 1775, Mr. Marshall wrote:--

 After my wife came from market (she went past 5) she ordered her girl
 Poll to carry the basket with some necessaries to the place, as
 she was coming after her, they intending to iron the clothes. Poll
 accordingly went, set down the basket, came back, went and dressed
 herself all clean, short calico gown, and said she was going to
 school; but presently after the negro woman Dinah came to look for
 her, her mistress having mistrusted she had a mind to play truant.
 This was about nine, but madam took her walk, but where--she is not
 come back to tell.

 Sept. 16. I arose before six as I was much concern’d to see my wife so
 afflicted as before on the bad conduct of her girl Poll who is not yet
 returned, but is skulking and running about town. This I understand
 was the practice of her mother who for many years before her death was
 a constant plague to my wife, and who left her this girl as a legacy,
 and who by report as well as by own knowledge, for almost three years
 has always been so down to this time. About eight, word was brought
 that Poll was just taken by Sister Lynn near the market, and brought
 to their house. A messenger was immediately dispatched for her, as
 she could not be found before, though a number of times they had been
 hunting her.

As the years went on, Poll kept taking what he called “cruises,”
“driving strokes of impudence,” visiting friends, strolling around the
streets, faring up and down the country, and he patiently writes:--

 This night our girl was brought home. I suppose she was hunted out, as
 it is called, and found by Ruth on the Passyunk Road. Her mistress was
 delighted upon her return, but I know of nobody else in house or out.
 I have nothing to say in the affair, as I know of nothing that would
 distress my wife so much as for me to refuse or forbid her being taken
 into the house.

 (A short time after) I arose by four as my wife had been up sometime
 at work cleaning house, and as she could not rest on account of Polls
 not being yet return’d. The girls frolics always afflict her mistress,
 so that to me its plain if she does not mend, or her mistress grieve
 less for her, that it will shorten Mrs Marshalls days considerably;
 besides our house wears quite a different face when Miss Poll is in it
 (although all the good she does is not worth half the salt she eats.)
 As her presence gives pleasure to her mistress, this gives joy to all
 the house, so that in fact she is the cause of peace or uneasiness in
 the home.

It is with a feeling of malicious satisfaction that we read at last of
the jaded, harassed, and conscientious wife going away for a visit,
and know that the man of the house will have to encounter and adjust
domestic problems as best he may. No sooner had the mistress gone than
Poll promptly departed also on a vacation. As scores of times before,
Mr. Marshall searched for her, and retrieved her (when she was ready to
come), and she behaved exceeding well for a day, only, when rested, to
again make a flitting. He writes on the 23d:--

 I roused Charles up at daylight. Found Miss Poll in the straw house.
 She came into the kitchen and talked away that she could not go out
 at night but she must be locked out. If that’s the case she told them
 she would pack up her clothes and go quite away; that she would not
 be so served as her Mistress did not hinder her staying out when she
 pleased, and the kitchen door to be opened for her when she came home
 and knocked. The negro woman told me as well as she could what she
 said. I then went and picked up her clothes that I could find. I asked
 her how she could behave so to me when I had conducted myself so easy
 towards her even so as to suffer her to sit at table and eat with me.
 This had no effect upon her. She rather inclined to think that she
 had not offended and had done nothing but what her mistress indulged
 her in. I told her before Betty that it was not worth my while to
 lick her though she really deserved it for her present impudence; but
 to remember I had taken all her clothes I could find except what she
 had on, which I intended to keep; that if she went away Charles with
 the horse should follow her and bring her back and that I would send
 a bellman around the borough of Lancaster to cry her as a runaway
 servant, wicked girl, with a reward for apprehending her.

The fatuous simplicity of Quaker Marshall’s reproofs, the futility of
his threats, the absurd failure of his masculine methods, received
immediate illustration--as might be expected, by Miss Poll promptly
running away that very night. Again he writes:--

 Charles arose near daybreak and I soon after, in order to try to find
 my nightly and daily plague, as she took a walk again last night.
 Charles found her. We turned her upstairs to refresh herself with
 sleep....

 (Two days later) After breakfast let our Poll downstairs where she has
 been kept since her last frolic. Fastened her up again at night. I
 think my old enemy Satan is much concerned in the conduct and behavior
 of that unfortunate girl. He knows her actions give me much anxiety
 and indeed at times raise my anger so I have said what should have
 been avoided, but I hope for the future to be more upon my guard and
 thus frustrate him in his attempts.

With what joy did the masculine housekeeper and steward greet the
return of his capable wife, and resign his position as turnkey! Poll,
upon liberation from restraint, flew swiftly away like any other bird
from its cage.

 Notwithstanding such heavy weather overhead and exceeding dirty under
 foot our Poll after breakfast went to see the soldiers that came
 as prisoners belonging to Burgoynes army. Our trull returned this
 morning. Her mistress gave her a good sound whipping. This latter was
 a variety.

And so the unequal fight went on; Poll calmly breaking down a
portion of the fence that she might decamp more promptly, and return
unheralded. She does not seem to have been vicious, but simply
triumphantly lawless and fond of gadding. I cannot always blame her.
I am sure I should have wanted to go to see the soldier-prisoners of
Burgoyne’s army brought into town. The last glimpse of her we have is
with “her head dressed in tiptop fashion,” rolling off in a coach to
Yorktown with Sam Morris’s son, and not even saying good-by to her
vanquished master.

Mr. Marshall was not the only Philadelphian to be thus afflicted; we
find one of his neighbors, Jacob Hiltzheimer, dealing a more summary
way with a refractory maid-servant. Shortly after noting in the pages
of his diary that “our maid Rosina was impertinent to her mistress,”
we find this good citizen taking the saucy young redemptioner before
the squire, who summarily ordered her to the workhouse. After remaining
a month in that confinement, Rosina boldly answered no, when asked if
she would go back to her master and behave as she ought, and she was
promptly remanded. But she soon repented, and was released. Her master
paid for her board and lodging while under detention, and quickly sold
her for £20 for her remaining term of service.

With the flight of the Marshalls’ sorry Poll, the sorrows and
trials of this good Quaker household with regard to what Raleigh
calls “domesticals” were not at an end. As the “creatures” and the
orchard and garden needed such constant attention, a man-servant was
engaged--one Antony--a character worthy of Shakespeare’s comedies. Soon
we find the master writing:--

 I arose past seven and had our gentleman to call down stairs. I spoke
 to him about his not serving the cows. He at once began about his way
 being all right, &c. I set about serving our family and let him, as in
 common, do as he pleases. I think I have hired a plague to my spirit.
 Yet he is still the same Antony--he says--complaisant, careful,
 cheerful, industrious.

Then Antony grew noisy and talkative, so abusive at last that he had to
be put out in the yard, where he railed and talked till midnight, to
the annoyance of the neighbors and the mortification of his mistress;
for he protested incessantly and noisily that all he wished was to
leave in peace and quiet, which he was not permitted to do. Then,
and repeatedly, his master told him to leave, but the servant had
no other home, and might starve in the war-desolated town; so after
half-promises he was allowed by these tender folk to stay on. Soon he
had another “tantrum,” and the astounded Quaker writes:--

 He rages terribly uttering the most out of the way wicked expressions
 yet not down-right swearing. Mamma says it is cursing in the Popish
 way....

What this Popish swearing could have been arouses my curiosity; I
suspect it was a kind of “dog-latin.” Antony constantly indulged in it,
to the horror and sorrow of the pious Marshalls. And the amusing, the
fairly comic side of all this is that Antony was a preacher, a prophet
in the land, and constantly held forth in meeting to sinners around
him. We read of him:--

 Antony went to Quakers meeting today where he preached; although he
 was requested to desist, so that by consent they broke up the meeting
 sooner than they would have done....

 Mamma went to meeting where Antony spoke and was forbid. He appeared
 to be most consummately bold and ignorant in his speaking there. And
 about the house I am obliged in a stern manner at times to order him
 not to say one word more....

 This afternoon Antony preached at the English Presbyterian meeting. It
 is said that the hearers laughed at him but he was highly pleased with
 himself.

 Antony preached at meeting. I kept engaged helping to cook the pot
 against master came home. He comes and goes as he pleases.

I don’t know when to pity poor Dame Marshall the most, with Antony
railing in the yard and disturbing the peace of the neighbors; or
Antony cursing in a Popish manner through the house; or Antony shamming
sick and moaning by the fireside; or Antony violently preaching when
she had gone to the quiet Quaker meeting for an hour of peace and rest.

This “runnagate rascal” was as elusive, as tricky, as malicious as a
gnome; whenever he was reproved, he always contrived to invent a new
method of annoyance in revenge. When chidden for not feeding the horse,
he at once stripped the leaves off the growing cabbages, cut off the
carrot heads, and pulled up the potatoes, and pretended and protested
he did it all solely to benefit them, and thus do good to his master.
When asked to milk the cow, he promptly left the Marshall domicile for
a whole day.

 Sent Antony in the orchard to watch the boys. As I was doubtful
 sometime whether if any came for apples Antony would prevent, I took
 a walk to the back fence, made a noise by pounding as if I would
 break the fence, with other noise. This convinced me Antony sat in
 his chair. He took no notice till my wife and old Rachel came to him,
 roused him, and scolded him for his neglect. His answer was that he
 thought it his duty to be still and not disturb them, as by so doing
 he should have peace in heaven and a blessing would ever attend him.

This was certainly the most sanctimonious excuse for laziness that
was ever invented; and on the following day Antony supplemented his
tergiversation by giving away all Mr. Marshall’s ripe apples through
the fence to passers-by--neighbors, boys, soldiers, and prisoners.
There may have been method in this orchard madness, for Antony loathed
apple-pie, a frequent comestible in the Marshall domicile, and often
refused to drink cider, and grumbling made toast-tea instead. In a
triumph of euphuistic indignation, Mr. Marshall thus records the
dietetic vagaries of the “most lazy impertinent talking lying fellow
any family was ever troubled with:”

 When we have no fresh broth he wants some; when we have it he cant sup
 it. When we have lean of bacon he wants the fat; when the fat he cant
 eat it without spreading salt over it as without it its too heavy for
 his stomach. If new milk he cant eat it till its sour, it curdles on
 his stomach; when sour or bonnyclabber it gives him the stomach-ache.
 Give him tea he doesn’t like such slop, its not fit for working men;
 if he hasn’t it when he asks for it he’s not well used. Give him apple
 pie above once for some days, its not suitable for him it makes him
 sick. If the negro woman makes his bed, she dont make it right; if she
 dont make it she’s a lazy black jade, &c.

In revenge upon the negro woman Dinah for not making his bed to suit
his notion, he pretended to have had a dream about her, which he
interpreted to such telling effect that she thought Satan was on his
swift way to secure her, and fled the house in superstitious fright,
in petticoat and shift, and was captured three miles out of town. On
her return, Antony outdid himself with “all the vile ribaldry, papist
swearing, incoherent scurrilous language, that imperious pride, vanity,
and folly could invent or express”--and then went off to meeting to
preach and pray. Well might the Quaker say with Juvenal, “The tongue
is the worst part of a bad servant.” At last, exasperated beyond
measure, his patient master vowed, “Antony, I will give thee a good
whipping,” and he could do it, for he had “pacified himself with sundry
stripes of the cowskin” on Dinah, the negro, when she, in emulation of
Antony, was impertinent to her mistress.

The threat of a whipping brought on Antony a “fit of stillness” which
descended like a blessing on the exhausted house. But “the devil is
sooner raised than laid;” anon Antony was in his old lunes again, and
the peace was broken by a fresh outburst of laziness, indifference, and
abuse, in which we must leave this afflicted household, for at that
date the _Remembrancer_ abruptly closes.

The only truly good service rendered to those much tried souls was by
a negro woman, Dinah, who, too good for this earth, died; and in her
death involved them in fresh trouble, for in that war-swept town they
could scarce procure her burial.

                             CHAPTER XII.

                         FIRESIDE INDUSTRIES.

Around the great glowing fireplace in an old New England kitchen
centred the homeliness and picturesqueness of an old-time home. The
walls and floor were bare; the furniture was often meagre, plain, and
comfortless; the windows were small and ill-fitting; the whole house
was draughty and cold; but in the kitchen glowed a beneficent heart
that spread warmth and cheer and welcome, and beauty also when

            the old rude-furnished room
    Burst flower-like into rosy bloom.

The settlers builded great chimneys with ample open hearths, and to
those hearths the vast forests supplied plentiful fuel; but as the
forests disappeared in the vicinity of the towns, the fireplaces also
shrank in size, so that in Franklin’s day he could write of the big
chimneys as “the fireplaces of our fathers;” and his inventions for
economizing fuel had begun to be regarded as necessities.

The kitchen was the housewife’s domain, the chimney-seat her throne;
but the furniture of that throne and the sceptre were far different
from the kitchen furnishings of to-day.

We often see fireplaces with hanging cranes in pictures illustrating
earliest colonial times, but the crane was unknown in those days. When
the seventeenth-century chimney was built, ledges were left on either
side, and on them rested the ends of a long heavy pole of green wood,
called a lug-pole or back bar. The derivation of the word lug-pole is
often given as meaning from lug to lug, as the chimney-side was often
called the lug. Whittier wrote:--

    And for him who sat by the chimney lug.

Others give it from the old English word _lug_, to carry; for it was
indeed the carrying-pole. It was placed high up in the yawning chimney,
with the thought and intent of its being out of reach of the devouring
flames, and from it hung a motley collection of hooks of various
lengths and weights, sometimes with long rods, sometimes with chains,
and rejoicing in various names. Pot-hooks, pot-hangers, pot-hangles,
pot-claws, pot-cleps, were one and the same; so also were trammels and
crooks. Gib and gibcroke were other titles. Hake was of course the old
English for hook:--

    On went the boilers till the hake
      Had much ado to bear ’em.

A twi-crook was a double hook.

Other terms were gallow-balke, for the lug-pole, and gallow-crookes for
pot-hooks. These were Yorkshire words, used alike in that county by
common folk and gentry. They appear in the inventory of the goods of
Sir Timothy Hutton, and in the farming-book of Henry Best, both dating
to the time of settlement of New England. A recon was another Yorkshire
name for a chain with pot-hooks. They were heard but rarely in New
England.

The “eetch-hooke” named by Thomas Angell, of Providence, in 1694, with
his “tramils and pot hookes” is an unknown and undescribable form of
trammel to me, possibly an H-hook.

By these vari-named hooks were suspended at various heights over the
flames pots, kettles, and other bailed cooking utensils.

The lug-pole, though made of green wood, often became brittle or
charred through too long and careless use over the hot fire, and was
left in the chimney till it broke under its weighty burden of food and
metal. And as within the chimney corner was a favorite seat for both
old and young of the household, not only were precious cooking utensils
endangered and food lost, but human life as well, as told in Judge
Sewall’s diary, and in other diaries and letters of the times. So, when
the iron crane was hung in the fireplace, it not only added grace and
convenience to the family hearth, but safety as well. On it still were
hung the pot-hooks and trammels, but with shortened arms or hangers.

The mantel was sometimes called by the old English name, clavy or
clavel-piece. In one of John Wynter’s letters, written in 1634, he
describes his new home in Maine:

 The chimney is large, with an oven in each end of him: he is so large
 that we can place our Cyttle within the Clavell-piece. We can brew
 and bake and boyl our Cyttle all at once in him.

The change in methods of cooking is plainly evinced in many of our
common kitchen utensils. In olden times the pots and kettles always
stood on legs, and all skillets and frying-pans and saucepans stood
on slender legs, that, if desired, they might be placed with their
contents over small beds of coals raked to one side of the hearth. A
further convenience to assist this standing over coals was a little
trivet, a tripod or three-footed stand, usually but a simple skeleton
frame on which the skillet could be placed. In the corner of a
fireplace would be seen trivets with legs of various lengths, through
which the desired amount of heat could be obtained. We read in Eden’s
_First Books on America_:--

 He shulde fynde in one place a fryingpan, in another chauldron, here a
 tryvet, there a spytte, and these in kynde in every pore mans house:--

Of somewhat later date was the toast rack, also standing on its little
spindling legs.

No better list can be given of the kitchen utensils of earliest
colonial days in America than those found in the inventories of the
estates of the dead immigrants. These inventories are, in some cases,
still preserved in the Colonial Court Records. We find that Madam
Olmstead, of Hartford, Conn., had, in 1640, in her kitchen:--

2 Brasse Skillets 1 Ladle 1 candlestick
one mortar all of brasse 1 brasse pott               5.

7 Small peuter dishes 1 peuter bason 6
porringers 2 peuter candlesticks 1
frudishe 2 little sasers 1 smale plate.              1. 10.

7 biger peuter dishes 1 salt 2 peuter
cupps 1 peuter dram 1 peuter bottel
1 Warmeing pan 13 peuter spoons                      2. 12.

1 Stupan 3 bowles & a tunnel 7 dishes
10 spoones one Wooddin cupp 1
Wooddin platter with three old latten
panns Two dozen and a halfe trenchers
two wyer candlesticks                               11.

2 Jacks 2 Bottels 2 drinking hornes 1
little pott                                         10.

2 beare hogsheads 2 beare barrels 2
powdering tubs 4 brueing vessels 1
cowle 2 firkins                                      2.

This was certainly a very good outfit. The utensils for the manufacture
and storage of beer did not probably stand in the kitchen, but in
the lean-to or brew-house. A “cowl” was a large tub with ears; in it
liquids could be carried by two persons, who bore the ends of a pole
thrust through the ears or handles. Often with the cowl was specified
a pail with iron bail. William Harris, of Pawtuxet, R. I., had, in
1681, “two Payles and one jron Bayle” worth three shillings. This
naming of the pail-bail marked the change in the form of pail handles;
originally, pails were carried by sticks thrust through ears on either
side of the vessel.

The jacks were waxed leather jugs or drinking horns, much used in
English alehouses in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, whose use
gave rise to the singular notion of the French that Englishmen drank
their ale out of their boots. Governor Winthrop had jacks and leather
bottles; but both names disappear from inventories by the year 1700, in
New England.

These leather bottles were in universal use in England “among shepherds
and harvest-people in the countrey.” They were also called bombards.
Their praises were sung in a very spirited ballad, of which I give a
few lines:--

    I wish in heaven his soul may dwell
    Who first found out the leather bottell.
    A leather bottell we know is good
    Far better than glasses or cases of wood,
    For when a mans at work in a field
    Your glasses and pots no comfort will yield,
    But a good leather bottell standing by
    Will raise his spirits whenever he’s dry.

    And when the bottell at last grows old,
    And will good liquor no longer hold,
    Out of the side you may make a clout
    To mend your shoes when they’re worn out,
    Or take and hang it up on a pin
    ’Twill serve to put hinges and odd things in.

Latten-ware was a kind of brass. It may be noted that no tin appears on
this list, nor in many of the inventories of these early Connecticut
colonists. Thomas Hooker had several “tynnen covers.”

Brass utensils were far from cheap. Handsome brass mortars were
expensive. Brass kettles were worth three pounds apiece. No wonder
the Indians wished their brass kettles buried with them as their
most precious possessions. The brass utensils of William Whiting, of
Hartford, in 1649, were worth twenty pounds; Thomas Hooker’s, about
fifteen pounds. Among other utensils named in the inventories of some
neighbors of Mr. Hooker were an “iron to make Wafer cakes,” “dyitt
vessels,” “shredin knife,” “flesh fork.” Robert Day had a “brass
chaffin dish, 3s, lether bottle 2s, brass posnet 4s, brass pott 6s,
brass kettle 2. 10s.” A chafing-dish in olden times was an open box of
wire into which coals were thrust.

Dame Huit, of Windsor, Conn., had these articles, among others:--

1 Cullender 2 Pudding pans. In kitchen
in brasse & Iron potts, ladles, skimmers,
dripping pans, posnets, and
other pans                                         6. 10s.

A pair Andirons 2 Brandii 2 Pair Crooks
3 pair of tonges and Iron Spitts pot-hangers       1.

1 Fornace                                          2.

Tubbs pales churnes butter barrels &
other woodin implements                            2.

The “two Brandii” were brand-irons or brond-yrons, a kind of trivet
or support to set on the andirons. Sometimes they held brands or logs
in place, or upon them dishes could be placed. Toasting-irons and
broiling-irons are named. “Scieufes,” or sieves, were worth a shilling
apiece.

Eleazer Lusher, of Dedham, Mass., in 1672, owned cob-irons, trammels,
firepans, gridirons, toasting-fork, salt pan, brand pan, mortar,
pestle, box iron heaters, kettles, skillets, spits, frying-pan, ladles,
skimmers, chafing-dishes, pots, pot-hooks, and creepers.

The name creeper brings to our consideration one of the homeliest
charms of the fireplace--the andirons. Creepers were the lower and
smaller andirons placed between the great firedogs. The word is also
applied to a low cooking spider, which could be pushed in among the
embers. Cob-irons were the simplest form of andirons, and usually were
used merely to support the spit; sometimes they had hooks to hold a
dripping-pan under the spit. Sometimes a fireplace showed three pairs
of andirons, on which logs could be laid at various heights. Sometimes
a single pair of andirons had three sets of hooks or branches for the
same purpose. They were made of iron, copper, steel, or brass, often
cast in a handsome design. The andirons played an important part in the
construction and preservation of a fire.

And the construction of one of these great fires was no light or
careless matter. Whittier, in his _Snow-Bound_, thus tells of the
making of the fire in his home:--

    We piled with care our nightly stack
    Of wood against the chimney-back,--
    The oaken log, green, huge, and thick,
    And on its top the stout back-stick;
    The knotty forestick laid apart,
    And filled between with curious art
    The ragged brush; then hovering near
    We watched the first red blaze appear.

Often the great backlog had to be rolled in with handspikes, sometimes
drawn in by a chain and yoke of oxen. The making of the fire and
its preservation from day to day were of equal importance. The
covering of the brands at night was one of the domestic duties, whose
non-fulfillment in those matchless days often rendered necessary a
journey with fire shovel to the house of the nearest neighbor to obtain
glowing coals to start again the kitchen fire.

A domestic luxury seen in well-to-do homes was a tin kitchen, a
box-like arrangement open on one side, which was set next the blaze.
It stood on four legs. In it bread was baked or _roasted_. Through the
kitchen passed a spit, which could be turned by an external handle; on
it meat was spitted to be roasted.

The brick oven was not used so frequently, usually but once a week.
This was a permanent furnishing. When the great chimney was built, a
solid heap of stones was placed for its foundation, and a vast and
massive structure was reared upon it. On one side of the kitchen
fireplace, but really a part of the chimney whole, was an oven which
opened at one side into the chimney, and below an ash pit with swinging
iron doors with a damper. To heat this oven a great fire of dry wood
was kindled within it, and kept burning fiercely for some hours. Then
the coal and ashes were removed, the chimney draught and damper were
closed, and the food to be cooked was placed in the heated oven. Great
pans of brown bread, pots of pork and beans, an Indian pudding, a dozen
pies, all went into the fiery furnace together.

On Thanksgiving week the great oven was heated night and morning
for several days. To place edibles at the rear of the glowing oven,
it is plain some kind of a shovel must be used; and an abnormally
long-handled one was universally found by the oven-side. It was called
a slice or peel, or fire-peel or bread-peel. Such an emblem was it of
domestic utility and unity that a peel and a strong pair of tongs were
a universal and luck-bearing gift to a bride. A good iron peel and
tongs cost about a dollar and a half. The name occurs constantly in old
wills among kitchen properties. We read of “the oven, the mawkin, the
bavin, the peel.” Sometimes, when the oven was heated, the peel was
besprinkled with meal, and great heaps of rye and Indian dough were
placed thereon, and by a dextrous and indescribable twist thrown upon
cabbage leaves on the oven-bottom, and thus baked in a haycock shape.

“Shepherd Tom” Hazard, in his inimitable _Jonny Cake Papers_, thus
speaks of the old-time methods of baking:--

 Rhineinjun bread, vulgarly called nowadays rye and Indian bread, in
 the olden time was always made of one quart of unbolted Rhode Island
 rye meal to two quarts of the coarser grained parts of Ambrosia
 (Narragansett corn meal) well kneaded and made into large round loaves
 of the size of a half-peck measure. There are two ways of baking
 it. One way was to fill two large iron basins with the kneaded dough
 and, late in the evening, when the logs were well burned down, to
 clear a place in the middle of the fire and place the two basins of
 bread, one on top of the other, so as to inclose their contents and
 press them into one loaf. The whole was then carefully covered with
 hot ashes, with coals on top, and left until morning. Another way
 was to place a number of loaves in iron basins in a long-heated and
 well-tempered brick oven--stone would not answer as the heat is too
 brittle--into which a cup of water was also placed to make the crust
 soft. The difference between brown bread baked in this way, with its
 thick, soft, sweet crust, from that baked in the oven of an iron stove
 I leave to abler pens than mine to portray.

In friendly chimney corners there stood a jovial companion of the peel
and tongs, the flip iron, or loggerhead, or flip-dog, or hottle. Lowell
wrote:--

    Where dozed a fire of beechen logs that bred
    Strange fancies in its embers golden-red,
    And nursed the loggerhead, whose hissing dip,
    Timed by nice instinct, creamed the bowl of flip.

Flip was a drink of vast popularity, and I believe of potent benefit
in those days when fierce winters and cold houses made hot drinks more
necessary to the preservation of health than nowadays. I have drunk
flip, but, like many a much-vaunted luxury of the olden time, I prefer
to read of it. It is indescribably burnt and bitter in flavor.

It may be noted in nearly all old inventories that a warming-pan is
a part of the kitchen furnishing. Wood wrote in 1634 of exportation
to the New England colony, “Warming pannes & stewing pannes are of
necessary use and very good traffick there.” One was invoiced in 1642
at 3_s._ 6_d._, another in 1654 at 5_s._ A warming-pan was a shallow
pan of metal, usually brass or iron, about a foot in diameter and
three or four inches deep, with a pierced brass or copper cover. It
was fitted with a long wooden handle. When used, it was filled with
coals, and when thoroughly heated, was thrust between the icy sheets
of the bed, and moved up and down to give warmth to every corner. Its
fireside neighbor was the footstove, a box of perforated metal in a
wooden frame, within which hot coals could be placed to warm the feet
of the goodwife during a long winter’s drive, or to render endurable
the arctic atmosphere of the unheated churches. Often a lantern of
pierced metal hung near the warming-pan. The old-time lanterns, still
occasionally found in New England kitchens or barns, form a most
interesting study for the antiquary, and a much neglected fad for the
collector. I have one of Elizabethan shape, to which, when I found it,
fragments of thin sheets of horn still clung--the remains of the horn
slides which originally were enclosed in the metal frame.

High up on the heavy beam over the fireplace stood usually a
candlestick, an old lamp, perhaps a sausage stuffer, or a spice-mill,
or a candle mold, a couple of wooden noggins, sometimes a pipe-tongs.
By the side of the fireplace hung the soot-blackened, smoke-dried
almanac, and near it often hung a betty-lamp, whose ill-smelling flame
could supply for conning the pages a closer though scarce brighter
light than the flickering hearth flame.

By the hearth, sometimes in the chimney corner, stood the high-backed
settle, a sheltered seat, while the family dye-pot often was used by
the children as a chimney bench.

Many household utensils once in common use in New England are now
nearly obsolete. In many cases the old-time names are disused and
forgotten, while the object itself may still be found with some modern
appellation. In reading old wills, inventories, and enrollments, and
the advertisements in old newspapers, I have made many notes of these
old names, and have sometimes succeeded, though with difficulty, in
identifying the utensils thus designated. Of course the different
English shire dialects supply a variety of local names. In some cases
good old English words have been retained in constant use in New
England, while wholly archaic in the fatherland.

In every thrifty New England home there stood a tub containing a pickle
for salting meat. It was called a powdering-tub, or powdering-trough.
This use of the word “powder” for salt dates even before Shakespeare’s
day.

Grains is an obsolete word for tines or prongs. Winthrop wrote in 1643
that a snake crawled in the Assembly room, and a parson “held it with
his foot and staff with a small pair of grains and killed it.”

Spenser used the word “flasket” thus: “In which to gather flowers to
fill their flasket.” It was a basket, or hamper, made of woven wicker.
John Hull, writing in 1675, asks that “Wikker Flasketts” be brought to
him on the _Sea Flower_.

A skeel was a small, shallow wooden tub, principally used for holding
milk to stand for cream. It sometimes had one handle. The word is
now used in Yorkshire. Akin to it is the word keeler, a small wooden
tub, which is still constantly heard in New England, especially in
application to a tub in which dishes are washed. Originally, cedar
keelers were made to hold milk, and a losset was also a large flat
wooden dish used for the same purpose. A skippet was a vessel much
like a dipper, small and round, with long handle, and used for ladling
liquids.

A quarn was a hand-mill for grinding meal, and sometimes it stood in
a room by itself. It was a step in domestic progress beyond pounding
grain with a pestle in a mortar, and was of earlier date than the
windmill or water-mill. In Wiclif’s translation we read in Matthew
xxiv: “Two wymmen schalen be gryndynge in quern,” etc. This word is
also used by Shakespeare in _Midsummer Night’s Dream_. In early New
England wills the word is found, as in one of 1671: “1 paire Quarnes
and Lumber in the quarne house, 10s.” It was sometimes spelled “cairn,”
as in a Windham will, and also “quern” and “quirn.”

Sometimes a most puzzling term will be found in one of these old
inventories, one which appears absolutely incomprehensible. Here is
one which seems like a riddle of which the answer is irrevocably
lost: “One Billy bassha Pan.” It is found in the kitchen list of the
rich possessions of Madam De Peyster, in 1774, which inventory is
preserved in the family archives at the Van Cortlandt Manor House, at
Croton-on-Hudson. You can give any answer you please to the riddle; but
my answer is this, in slightly altered verse. I think that Madam De
Peyster’s cook used that dish to serve:--

      A sort of soup or broth or stew
    Or hotchpot of all sorts of fishes,
      That Greenwich never could outdo,
    Green herbs, red peppers, mussels, saffron,
      Soles, onions, garlic, roach and dace;
    All these were cooked in the Manor kitchen,
      In that one dish of Bouillabaisse.

The early settlers were largely indebted to various forest trees for
cheap, available, and utilizable material for the manufacture of both
kitchen utensils and tableware. Wood-turning was for many years a
recognized trade; dish-turner a business title. We find Lion Gardiner
writing to John Winthrop, Jr., in 1652, “My wyfe desireth Mistress
Lake to get her a dozen of trays for shee hearith that there is a good
tray-maker with you.”

Governor Bradford found the Indians using wooden bowls, trays, and
dishes, and the “Indian bowls,” made from the knots of maple-trees,
were much sought after by housekeepers till this century. A fine
specimen of these bowls is now in the Massachusetts Historical Society.
It was originally taken from the wigwam of King Philip. Wooden noggins
(low bowls with handles) are constantly named in early inventories,
and Mary Ring, of Plymouth, thought, in 1633, that a “wodden cupp” was
valuable enough to leave by will as a token of friendship. Wooden
trenchers, also made by hand, were used on the table for more than a
century, and were universally bequeathed by will, as by that of Miles
Standish. White poplar wood made specially handsome dishes. Wooden pans
were made in which to set milk. Wooden bread troughs were used in every
home. These were oblong, trencher-shaped bowls, about a foot and a half
in length, hollowed and shaped by hand from a log of wood. Across the
trough ran lengthwise a stick or rod, on which the flour was sifted in
a temse, or searce, or sieve. The saying, “set the Thames on fire,” is
said to have been originally “set the temse on fire,” meaning that hard
labor would, by the friction of constant turning, set the wooden temse,
or sieve, on fire.

It was not necessary to apply to the wood-turner to manufacture these
simply shaped dishes. Every winter the men and boys of the household
manufactured every kind of domestic utensils and portions of farm
implements that could be whittled or made from wood with simple tools.
By the cheerful kitchen fireside much of this work was done. Indeed,
the winter picture of the fireside should always show the figure of a
whittling boy. They made butter paddles of red cherry, salt mortars,
pig troughs, pokes, sled neaps, ax helves, which were sawn, whittled,
and carefully scraped with glass; box traps and “figure 4” traps,
noggins, keelers, rundlets, flails, cheese-hoops, cheese-ladders,
stanchions, handles for all kinds of farm implements, and niddy-noddys.
Strange to say, the latter word is not found in any of our
dictionaries, though the word is as well known in country vernacular as
the article itself--a hand-reel--or as the old riddle:--

          Niddy-noddy,
    Two heads and one body.

There were still other wooden vessels. In his _Philocothonista, or The
Drunkard Opened, Dissected and Anatomized_ (1635), Thomas Heywood,
gives for “carouseing-bowles of wood” these names: “mazers, noggins,
whiskins, piggins, cruizes, wassel-bowles, ale-bowles, court-dishes,
tankards, kannes.”

There were many ways of usefully employing the winter evening hours.
Some thrifty folk a hundred years ago occupied spare time in sticking
card-teeth in wool-cards. The strips of pierced leather and the
wire teeth bent in proper shape were supplied to them by the card
manufacturer. The long leather strips and boxes filled with the bent
wire teeth might be seen standing in many a country home, and many an
evening by the light of the blazing fire,--for the work required little
eyesight or dexterity,--sat the children on dye-pot, crickets, and logs
of wood, earning a scant sum to add to their “broom-money.”

By the side of the chimney, in New England country houses, always
hung a broom or besom of peeled birch. These birch brooms were
a characteristic New England production. To make one a straight
birch-tree from three to four inches in diameter was chosen, and
about five feet of the trunk was cut off. Ten inches from the larger
end a notch was cut around the stick, and the bark peeled off from
thence to the end. Then with a sharp knife the bared end was carefully
split up to the notch in slender slivers, which were held back by the
broom-maker’s left hand until they became too many and too bulky to
restrain, when they were tied back with a string. As the tendency of
the slivers or splints was to grow slightly thinner toward the notch,
there was left in the heart of the growing broom a short core, which
had to be whittled off. When this was done the splints were all turned
back to their first and natural position, a second notch was cut an
inch above the first one, leaving a strip of bark an inch in diameter;
the bark was peeled off from what was destined to be the broom handle,
and a series of splints was shaved down toward the second notch. Enough
of the stick was left to form the handle; this was carefully whittled
until an inch or so in diameter, was smoothed, and furnished with a
hole in the end in which to place a string or a strip of leather for
suspension. The second series of splints from the handle end was firmly
turned down and tied with hempen twine over the wholly splintered end,
and all the splints cut off the same length. The inch of bark which
remained of the original tree helped to hold the broom-splints firmly
in place.

When these brooms were partly worn, the restraining string could be
removed, and the flaring splints formed an ideal oven-besom, spreading
and cleaning the ashes from every corner and crevice. Corn brooms were
unknown in these country neighborhoods until about the middle of the
present century.

A century, and even as late as half a century ago, many a farmer’s
son (and daughter too) throughout New England earned his or her first
spending-money by making birch brooms for the country stores, from
whence they were sent to the large cities, especially Boston, where
there was a constant demand for them. In Northampton, about 1790, one
shopkeeper kept as many as seven or eight hundred of these brooms on
hand at one time.

The boys and girls did not grow rich very fast at broom-making.
Throughout Vermont, fifty years ago, the uniform price paid to the
maker for these brooms was but six cents apiece, and as he had to work
at least three evenings to make one broom,--to say nothing of the
time spent in selecting and cutting the birch-tree,--it was not so
profitable an industry as gathering beech-nuts at a dollar a bushel.
Major Robert Randolph told in fashionable London circles, that about
the year 1750, he carried many a load of these birch brooms on his
back ten miles to Concord, that he might thus earn a few shillings.
Such brooms were known by different names in different localities:
birch brooms, splinter brooms, and Indian brooms. The Indians were
very proficient in making them, and it is said invented them. This can
readily be believed, for like birch-bark canoes and snowshoes, they
are examples of perfection in utility and in the employment of native
materials. Squaws wandered over certain portions of the country bearing
brooms on their backs, peddling them from house to house for ninepence
apiece and a drink of cider. In 1806, one minister of Haverhill, New
Hampshire, had two of these brooms given to him as a marriage fee. When
a Hadley man planted broom corn in 1797, and made corn brooms to sell,
he was scornfully met with the remark that broom-making was work for
Indians and boys. It was long ere his industry crowded out the sturdy
birch brooms.

There were many domestic duties which did not waft sweet “odors of
Araby;” the annual spring manufacture of soft soap for home consumption
was one of them, and also one of the most important and most trying
of all the household industries. The refuse grease from the family
cooking was stowed away in tubs and barrels through the cool winter
months in unsavory masses, and the wood-ashes from the great fireplaces
were also thriftily stored until the carefully chosen time arrived. The
day was selected with much deliberation, after close consultation with
that family counselor, the almanac, for the moon must be in the right
quarter, and the tide at the flood, if the soap were to “come right.”
Then the leach was set outside the kitchen door. Some families owned
a strongly made leach-tub, some used a barrel, others cut a section
from a great birch-tree, and removed the bark to form a tub, which
was placed loosely in a circular groove in a base made of wood or,
preferably, of stone. This was not set horizontally, but was slightly
inclined. The tub was filled with ashes, and water was scantily poured
in until the lye trickled or leached out of an outlet cut in the groove
at the base. The “first run” of lye was not strong enough to be of use,
and was poured again upon the ashes. The wasted ashes were replenished
again and again, and water poured in small quantities on them, and
the lye accumulated in a receptacle placed for it. It was a universal
test that when the lye was strong enough to hold up an egg, it was also
strong enough to use for the soap boiling. In the largest iron pot the
grease and lye were boiled together, often over a great fire built
in the open air. The leached ashes were not deemed refuse and waste;
they were used by the farmer as a fertilizer. Soap made in this way,
while rank and strong, is so pure and clean that it seems almost like a
jelly, and shows no trace of the vile grease that helped to form it.

The dancing firelight shone out on no busier scene than on the grand
candle-dipping. It had taken weeks to prepare for this domestic
industry, which was the great household event of the late autumn, as
soap-making was of the spring. Tallow had been carefully saved from the
domestic animals killed on the farm, the honeyed store of the patient
bee had been robbed of wax to furnish materials, and there was still
another source of supply.

The summer air of the coast of New England still is sweet with one
of the freshest, purest plant-perfumes in the world--the scent of
bayberry. These dense woody shrubs bear profusely a tiny, spicy,
wax-coated berry; and the earliest colonists quickly learned that from
this plentiful berry could be obtained an inflammable wax, which would
replace and supplement any lack of tallow. The name so universally
applied to the plant--candleberry--commemorates its employment for this
purpose. I never pass the clumps of bayberry bushes in the early autumn
without eagerly picking and crushing the perfumed leaves and berries;
and the clean, fresh scent seems to awaken a dim recollection,--a
hereditary memory,--and I see, as in a vision, the sober little
children of the Puritans standing in the clear glowing sunlight, and
faithfully stripping from the gnarled bushes the waxy candleberries;
not only affording through this occupation material assistance to
the household supplies, but finding therein health, and I am sure
happiness, if they loved the bayberries as I, their descendant, do.

The method of preparing this wax was simple; it still exists in a few
Plymouth County households. The berries are simply boiled with hot
water in a kettle, and the resolved wax skimmed off the top, refined,
and permitted to harden into cakes or candles. The references in
old-time records to this bayberry wax are too numerous to be recounted.
A Virginian governor, Robert Beverley (for the bayberry and its wax
was known also in the South as myrtleberry wax), gave, perhaps, the
clearest description of it:--

 A pale green brittle wax of a curious green color, which by refining
 becomes almost transparent. Of this they made candles which are never
 greasy to the touch nor melt with lying in the hottest weather;
 neither does the snuff of these ever offend the smell, like that of a
 tallow candle; but instead of being disagreeable, if an accident puts
 a candle out, it yields a pleasant fragrancy to all that are in the
 room; insomuch that nice people often put them out on purpose to have
 the incense of the expiring snuff.

It is true that the balmy breath of the bayberry is exhaled even on its
funeral pyre. A bayberry candle burns like incense; and I always think
of its perfume as truly the incense to the household hearth-gods of an
old New England home.

Bayberry wax was a standard farm-product, a staple article of traffic,
till this century, and it was constantly advertised in the newspapers.
As early as 1712, Thomas Lechmere wrote to John Winthrop, Jr.:--

 I am now to beg one favour of you, that you secure for me all the
 bayberry wax you can possibly lay yor hands on. What charge you shall
 be at securing it shall be thankfully paid you. You must take a care
 that they do not putt too much tallow among it, being a custome and
 cheate they have gott.

When the candle-dipping began, a fierce fire was built in the
fireplace, and over it was hung the largest house kettle, half filled
with water and melted tallow, or wax. Candle-rods were brought down
from the attic, or pulled out from under the edge of beams, and placed
about a foot and a half apart, reaching from chair to chair.

Boards were placed underneath to save the spotless floor from greasy
drippings. Across these rods were laid, like the rounds of a ladder,
shorter sticks or reeds to which the wicks were attached at intervals
of a few inches. The wicks of loosely spun cotton or tow were dipped
time and time again into the melted tallow, and left to harden between
each dipping. Of course, if the end of the kitchen (where stood the
rods and hung the wicks) were very cold, the candles grew quickly,
since they hardened quickly; but they were then more apt to crack.
When they were of proper size, they were cut off, spread in a sunny
place in the garret to bleach, and finally stored away in candle-boxes.
Sometimes the tallow was poured into molds; when, of course,
comparatively few candles could be made in a day. In some communities
itinerant candle-makers carried molds from house to house, and assisted
in the candle manufacture.

These candles were placed in candlesticks, or in large rooms were
set in rude chandeliers of strips of metal with sockets, called
candle-beams. Handsome rooms had sconces, and the kitchen often had
a sliding stand by which the candle could be adjusted at a desired
height. Snuffers were as indispensable as candlesticks, and were
sometimes called snuffing-iron, or snit--a word not in the _Century
Dictionary_--from the old English verb, “snyten,” to blow out. The
snuffers lay in a little tray called a snuffer-tray, snuffer-dish,
snuffer-boat, snuffer-slice, or snuffer-pan. Save-alls, a little
wire frame to hold up the last burning end of candle, were another
contrivance of our frugal ancestors.

In no way was a thrifty housewife better known than through her
abundant stock of symmetrical candles; and nowhere was a skilful and
dextrous hand more needed than in shaping them. Still, candles were
not very costly if the careless housewife chose to purchase them. The
_Boston Evening Post_ of October 5, 1767, has this advertisement:
“Dip’d Tallow Candles Half a Pistareen the single Pound & Cheaper by
Cwt.”

In many a country household some old-time frugalities linger, but the
bounteous oil-wells of Pennsylvania have rendered candles not only
obsolete, but too costly for country use, and by a turn of fashion they
have become comparatively an article of luxury, but still seem to throw
an old-time refinement wherever their soft rays shine.

An account of housewifely duties in my great-grandmother’s home was
thus written, in halting rhyme, by one of her sons when he too was
old:--

    The boys dressed the flax, the girls spun the tow,
    The music of mother’s footwheel was not slow.
    The flax on the bended pine distaff was spread,
    With squash shell of water to moisten the thread.
    Such were the pianos our mothers did keep
    Which they played on while spinning their children to sleep.
    My mother I’m sure must have borne off the medal,
    For she always was placing her foot on the pedal.
    The warp and the filling were piled in the room,
    Till the web was completed and fit for the loom,
    Then labor was pleasure, and industry smiled,
    And the wheel and the loom every trouble beguiled,
    And there at the distaff the good wives were made.
    Thus Solomon’s precepts were fully obeyed.

The manufacture of the farm-reared wool was not so burdensome and
tedious a process as that of flax, but it was far from pleasant. The
fleeces of wool had to be opened out and cleaned of all sticks, burrs,
leaves, feltings, tar-marks, and the dirt which always remained after
months’ wear by the sheep; then it had to be sorted out for dyeing,
which latter was a most unpleasant process. Layers of the various
colors of wools after being dyed were rolled together and carded
on coarse wool-cards, again and again, then slightly greased by a
disagreeable and tiresome method, then run into rolls. The wool was
spun on the great wheel which stood in the kitchen with the reel and
swifts, and often by the glowing firelight the mother spun. A tender
and beautiful picture of this domestic scene has been drawn by Dr.
Gurdon Russell, of Hartford, in his _Up Neck in 1825_.

 My mother was spinning with the great wheel, the white rolls of wool
 lay upon the platform, and as they were spun upon the spindle, she
 turning the wheel with one hand, and with extended arm and delicate
 fingers holding the roll in the other, stepping backwards and forwards
 lightly till it was spun into yarn, it formed a picture to me, sitting
 upon a low stool, which can never be forgotten. Her movements were
 every grace, her form all of beauty to me who opposite sat and was
 watching her dextrous fingers.

The manufacture of flax into linen material was ever felt to be of
vast importance, and was encouraged by legislation from earliest
colonial days, but it received a fresh impulse in New England through
the immigration of about one hundred Irish families from Londonderry.
They settled in New Hampshire on the Merrimac about 1719. They spun
and wove by hand, but with far more skill than prevailed among those
English settlers who had already become Americans. They established
a manufactory according to Irish methods, and attempts at a similar
establishment were made in Boston. There was much public excitement
over spinning. Women, rich as well as poor, appeared on Boston Common
with their wheels, thus making spinning a popular holiday recreation. A
brick building was erected as a spinning-school, and a tax was placed
in 1737 to support it. But this was not an industrial success, the
excitement died out, the public spinning-school lost its ephemeral
popularity, and the wheel became again simply a domestic duty and pride.

For many years after this, housewives had everywhere flax and hemp to
spin and weave in their homes, and the preparation of these staples
seems to us to-day a monumental labor. On almost every farm might
be seen a patch of the pretty flax, ripening for the hard work of
pulling, rippling, rotting, breaking, swingling, and combing, which
all had to be done before it came to the women’s hands for spinning.
The seed was sown broad-cast, and allowed to grow till the bobs or
bolls were ripe. The flax was then pulled and spread neatly in rows to
dry. This work could be done by boys. Then men whipped or threshed or
rippled out all the seed to use for meal; afterwards the flax stalks
were allowed to lie for some time in water until the shives were
thoroughly rotten, when they were cleaned and once more thoroughly
dried and tied in bundles. Then came work for strong men, to break
the flax on the ponderous flaxbreak, to get out the hard “hexe” or
“bun,” and to swingle it with a swingle knife, which was somewhat
like a wooden dagger. Active men could swingle forty pounds a day on
the swingling-board. It was then hetchelled or combed or hackled by
the housewife, and thus the rough tow was gotten out, when it was
straightened and made ready for the spruce distaff, round which it
was finally wrapped. The hatchelling was tedious work and irritating
to the lungs, for the air was filled with the fluffy particles which
penetrated everywhere. The thread was then spun on a “little wheel.” It
was thought that to spin two double skeins of linen, or four double
skeins of tow, or to weave six yards of linen, was a good day’s work.
For a week’s work a girl received fifty cents and “her keep.” She thus
got less than a cent and a half a yard for weaving. The skeins of linen
thread went through many tedious processes of washing and bleaching
before being ready for weaving; and after the cloth was woven it was
“bucked” in a strong lye, time and time again, and washed out an equal
number of times. Then it was “belted” with a maple beetle on a smooth,
flat stone; then washed and spread out to bleach in the pure sunlight.
Sometimes the thread, after being spun and woven, had been washed and
belted a score of times ere it was deemed white and soft enough to use.
The little girls could spin the “swingling tow” into coarse twine, and
the older ones make “all tow” and “tow and linen” and “harden” stuffs
to sell.

To show the various duties attending the manufacture of these domestic
textiles by a Boston woman of intelligence and social standing, as late
as 1788, let me quote a few entries from the diary of the wife of Col.
John May:--

 A large kettle of yarn to attend upon. Lucretia and self rinse our
 through many waters, get out, dry, attend to, bring in, do up and sort
 110 score of yarn, this with baking and ironing.

 Went to hackling flax.

 Rose early to help Ruth warp and put a piece in the loom.

 Baking and hackling yarn. A long web of tow to whiten and weave.

The wringing out of this linen yarn was most exhausting, and the
rinsing in various waters was no simple matter in those days, for
the water did not conveniently run into the houses through pipes and
conduits, but had to be laboriously carried in pailfuls from a pump, or
more frequently raised in a bucket from a well.

I am always touched, when handling the homespun linens of olden times,
with a sense that the vitality and strength of those enduring women,
through the many tedious and exhausting processes which they had
bestowed, were woven into the warp and woof with the flax, and gave to
the old webs of linen their permanence and their beautiful texture. How
firm they are, and how lustrous! And how exquisitely quaint and fine
are their designs; sometimes even Scriptural designs and lessons are
woven into them. They are, indeed, a beautiful expression of old-time
home and farm life. With their close-woven, honest threads runs this
finer beauty, which may be impalpable and imperceptible to a stranger,
but which to me is real and ever-present, and puts me truly in touch
with the life of my forbears. But, alas, it is through intuition we
must learn of this old-time home life, for it has vanished from our
sight, and much that is beautiful and good has vanished with it.

The associations of the kitchen fireside that linger in the hearts
of those who are now old can find no counterpart in our domestic
surroundings to-day. The welcome cheer of the open fire, which graced
and beautified even the humblest room, is lost forever with the close
gatherings of the family, the household occupations, the homespun
industries which formed and imprinted in the mind of every child the
picture of a home.

                          Transcriber’s Notes

Minor punctuation errors have been silently corrected.

Page 100: “take the the case” changed to “take the case”

Page 162: “promply sailed” changed to “promptly sailed”

Page 302: “was was set outside” changed to “was set outside”

Spelling and punctuation quoted from original sources has been left
as-is.