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 roomBurst flower-like into rosy bloom.

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 economizingfuel 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 wordlug, 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, sometimeswith 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 hakeHad much ado to bear ’em.

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 brewand 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’sFirst 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 Americathan 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:—

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 dwellWho first found out the leather bottell.A leather bottell we know is goodFar better than glasses or cases of wood,For when a mans at work in a fieldYour glasses and pots no comfort will yield,But a good leather bottell standing byWill 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 cloutTo 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.

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 cloutTo 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.

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 ofMr. 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:—

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 hisSnow-Bound, thus tells of the making of the fire in his home:—

We piled with care our nightly stackOf 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 artThe ragged brush; then hovering nearWe watched the first red blaze appear.

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 orroasted. Through the kitchen passed a spit, which could be turned by anexternal 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-handledone 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 inimitableJonny 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 thesize 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 bredStrange fancies in its embers golden-red,And nursed the loggerhead, whose hissing dip,Timed by nice instinct, creamed the bowl of flip.

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 3s.6d., another in 1654 at 5s.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 thefeet 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 shelteredseat, 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, anda 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 theSea 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 readin Matthew xxiv: “Two wymmen schalen be gryndynge in quern,” etc. This word is also used by Shakespeare inMidsummer 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 stewOr 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.

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 firesideshould 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.

Niddy-noddy,

Two heads and one body.

There were still other wooden vessels. In hisPhilocothonista, 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 sliversor 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 everycorner 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 tenmiles 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 mosttrying 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 pouredin 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 simplyboiled 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 themelted 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 theCentury 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. TheBoston Evening Postof 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 keepWhich 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 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 wheelwhich 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 hisUp 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, butwith 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 fourdouble 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:—

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