Beverley, the historian of Virginia, wrote of the smell of burning bayberry tallow:—

Bayberry wax was not only a useful home-product, but an article of traffic till this century, and was constantly advertised in the newspapers. In 1712, in a letter written to John Winthrop, F.R.S., I find:—

Bayberries were of enough importance to have some laws made about them. Everywhere on Long Island grew the stunted bushes, and everywhere they were valued. The town of Brookhaven, in 1687, forbade the gathering of the berries before September 15, under penalty of fifteen shillings' fine.

The pungent and unique scent of the bayberry, equally strong in leaf and berry, is to me one of the elements of the purity and sweetness of the air of our New England coast fields in autumn. It grows everywhere, green and cheerful, in sun-withered shore pastures, in poor bits of earth on our rocky coast, where it has few fellow field-tenants to crowd the ground. It is said that the highest efforts of memory are stimulated through our sense of smell, by the association of ideas with scents. That of bayberry, whenever I pass it, seems to awaken in me an hereditary memory, to recall a life of two centuries ago. I recall the autumns of trial and of promise in our early history, and the bayberry fields are peopled with children in Puritan garb, industriously gathering the tiny waxen fruit. Equally full of sentiment is the scent of my burning bayberry candles, which were made last autumn in an old colony town.

The history of whale-fishing in New England is the history of one of the most fascinating commercial industries the world has ever known. It is a story with every element of intense interest, showing infinite romance, adventure, skill, courage, and fortitude. It brought vast wealth to the communities that carried on the fishing, and great independence and comfort to the families of the whalers. To the whalemen themselves it brought incredible hardships and dangers, yet they loved the life with a love which is strange to view and hard to understand. In the oil made from these "royal fish" the colonists found a vast and cheap supply for their metal and glass lamps; while the toothed whales had stored in their blunt heads a valuable material which was at once used for making candles; it is termed, in the most ancient reference I have found to it in New England records, Sperma-Coeti.

It was asserted that one of these spermaceti candles gave out more light than three tallow candles, and had four times as big a flame. Soon their manufacture and sale amounted to large numbers, and materially improved domestic illumination.

All candles, whatever their material, were carefully used by the economical colonists to the last bit by a little wire frame of pins and rings called a save-all. Candle-sticks of various metals and shapes were found in every house; and often sconces, which were also called candle-arms, or prongs. Candle-beams were rude chandeliers, a metal or wooden hoop with candle-holders. Snuffers were always seen, with which to trim the candles, and snuffers trays. These were sometimes exceedingly richly ornamented, and were often of silver: extinguishers often accompanied the snuffers.

Though lamps occasionally appear on early inventories and lists of sales, and though there was plenty of whale and fish oil to burn, lamps were not extensively used in America for many years. "Betty-lamps," shaped much like antique Roman lamps, were the earliest form. They were small, shallow receptacles, two or three inches in diameter and about an inch in depth; either rectangular, oval, round, or triangular in shape, with a projecting nose or spout an inch or two long. They usually had a hook and chain by which they could be hung on a nail in the wall, or on the round in the back of a chair; sometimes there was also a smaller hook for cleaning out the nose of the lamp. They were filled with tallow, grease, or oil, while a piece of cotton rag or coarse wick was so placed that, when lighted, the end hung out on the nose. From this wick, dripping dirty grease, rose a dull, smoky, ill-smelling flame.

Phœbe-lamps were similar in shape; though some had double wicks, that is, a nose at either side. Three betty-lamps are shown in the illustration: all came from old colonial houses. The iron lamp, solid with the accumulated grease of centuries, was found in a Virginia cabin; the rectangular brass lamp came from a Dutch farmhouse; and the graceful oval brass lamp from a New England homestead.

Pewter was a favorite material for lamps, as it was for all other domestic utensils. It was specially in favor for the lamps for whale oil and the "Porter's fluid," that preceded our present illuminating medium, petroleum. A rare form is the pewter lamp here shown. It is in the collection of ancient lamps, lanterns, candlesticks, etc., owned by Mrs. Samuel Bowne Duryea, of Brooklyn. It came from a Salem home, where it was used as a house-lantern. With its clear bull's-eyes of unusually pure glass, it gave what was truly a brilliant light for the century of its use. A group of old pewter lamps, of the shapes commonly used in the homes of our ancestors a century or so ago, is also given; chosen, not because they were unusual or beautiful, but because they were universal in their use.

The lamps of Count Rumford's invention were doubtless a great luxury, with their clear steady light; but they were too costly to be commonly seen in our grandfathers' homes. Nor were Argand burners ever universal. Glass lamps of many simple shapes shared popularity for a long time with the pewter lamps; and as pewter gradually disappeared from household use, these glass lamps monopolized the field. They were rarely of cut or colored glass, but were pressed glass of commonplace form and quality. A group of them is here given which were all used in old New England houses in the early part of this century.

For many years the methods of striking a light were very primitive, just as they were in Europe; many families possessed no adequate means, or very imperfect ones. If by ill fortune the fire in the fireplace became wholly extinguished through carelessness at night, some one, usually a small boy, was sent to the house of the nearest neighbor, bearing a shovel or covered pan, or perhaps a broad strip of green bark, on which to bring back coals for relighting the fire. Nearly all families had some form of a flint and steel,—a method of obtaining fire which has been used from time immemorial by both civilized and uncivilized nations. This always required a flint, a steel, and a tinder of some vegetable matter to catch the spark struck by the concussion of flint and steel. This spark was then blown into a flame. Among the colonists scorched linen was a favorite tinder to catch the spark of fire; and till this century all the old cambric handkerchiefs, linen underwear, and worn sheets of a household were carefully saved for this purpose. The flint, steel, and tinder were usually kept together in a circular tinder-box, such as is shown in the accompanying illustration; it was a shape universal in England and America. This had an inner flat cover with a ring, a flint, a horseshoe-shaped steel, and an upper lid with a place to set a candle-end in, to carry the newly acquired light. Though I have tried hundreds of times with this tinder-box, I have never yet succeeded in striking a light. The sparks fly, but then the operation ceases in modern hands. Charles Dickens said if you had good luck, you could get a light in half an hour. Soon there was an improvement on this tinder-box, by which sparks were obtained by spinning a steel wheel with a piece of cord, somewhat like spinning a humming top, and making the wheel strike a flint fixed in the side of a little trough full of tinder. This was an infinite advance in convenience on tinder-box No. 1. This box was called in the South a mill; one is here shown. Then some person invented strips of wood dipped in sulphur and called "spunks." These readily caught fire, and retained it, and were handy to carry light to a candle or pile of chips.

Another way of starting a fire was by flashing a little powder in the pan of an old-fashioned gun; sometimes this fired a twist of tow, which in turn started a heap of shavings.

Down to the time of our grandfathers, and in some country homes of our fathers, lights were started with these crude elements,—flint, steel, tinder,—and transferred by the sulphur splint; for fifty years ago matches were neither cheap nor common.

Though various processes for lighting in which sulphur was used in a match shape, were brought before the public at the beginning of this century, they were complicated, expensive, and rarely seen. The first practical friction matches were "Congreves," made in England in 1827. They were thin strips of wood or cardboard coated with sulphur and tipped with a mixture of mucilage, chlorate of potash, and sulphide of antimony. Eighty-four of them were sold in a box for twenty-five cents, with a piece of "glass-paper" through which the match could be drawn. There has been a long step this last fifty years between the tinder-box used so patiently for two centuries, and the John Jex Long match-making machine of our times, which turns out seventeen million matches a day.

CHAPTER III
THE KITCHEN FIRESIDE

The kitchen in all the farmhouses of all the colonies was the most cheerful, homelike, and picturesque room in the house; indeed, it was in town houses as well. The walls were often bare, the rafters dingy; the windows were small, the furniture meagre; but the kitchen had a warm, glowing heart that spread light and welcome, and made the poor room a home. In the houses of the first settlers the chimneys and fireplaces were vast in size, sometimes so big that the fore-logs and back-logs for the fire had to be dragged in by a horse and a long chain; or a hand-sled was kept for the purpose. Often there were seats within the chimney on either side. At night children could sit on these seats and there watch the sparks fly upward and join the stars which could plainly be seen up the great chimney-throat.

But as the forests disappeared under the waste of burning for tar, for potash, and through wanton clearing, the fireplaces shrank in size; and Benjamin Franklin, even in his day, could write of "the fireplaces of our fathers."

The inflammable catted chimney of logs and clay, hurriedly and readily built by the first settlers, soon gave place in all houses to vast chimneys of stone, built with projecting inner ledges, on which rested a bar about six or seven or even eight feet from the floor, called a lug-pole (lug meaning to carry) or a back-bar; this was made of green wood, and thus charred slowly—but it charred surely in the generous flames of the great chimney heart. Many annoying, and some fatal accidents came from the collapsing of these wooden back-bars. The destruction of a dinner sometimes was attended with the loss of a life. Later the back-bars were made of iron. On them were hung iron hooks or chains with hooks of various lengths called pothooks, trammels, hakes, pot-hangers, pot-claws, pot-clips, pot-brakes, pot-crooks. Mr. Arnold Talbot, of Providence, Rhode Island, has folding trammels, nine feet long, which were found in an old Narragansett chimney heart. Gibcrokes and recons were local and less frequent names, and the folks who in their dialect called the lug-pole a gallows-balke called the pothooks gallows-crooks. On these hooks pots and kettles could be hung at varying heights over the fire. The iron swinging-crane was a Yankee invention of a century after the first settlement, and it proved a convenient and graceful substitute for the back-bar.

Some Dutch houses had an adaptation of a Southern method of housekeeping in the use of a detached house called a slave-kitchen, where the meals of the negro house and farm servants were cooked and served. The slave-kitchen of the old Bergen homestead stood unaltered till within a few years on Third Avenue in Brooklyn. It still exists in a dismantled condition. Its picture plainly shows the stone ledges within the fireplace, the curved iron lug-pole, and hanging pothooks and trammels. With ample fire of hickory logs burning on the hearthstone, and the varied array of primitive cooking-vessels steaming with savory fare, a circle of laughing, black faces shining with the glowing firelight and hungry anticipation, would make a "Dutch interior" of American form and shaping as picturesque and artistic as any of Holland. The fireplace itself sometimes went by the old English name, clavell-piece, as shown by the letters of John Wynter, written from Maine in 1634 to his English home. "The Chimney is large, with an oven at each end of him: he is so large that wee can place our Cyttle within the Clavell-piece. Wee can brew and bake and boyl our Cyttle all at once in him." Often a large plate of iron, called the fire-back or fire-plate, was set at the back of the chimney, where the constant and fierce fire crumbled brick and split stone. These iron backs were often cast in a handsome design.

In New York the chimneys and fireplaces were Dutch in shape; the description given by a woman traveller at the end of the seventeenth century ran thus:—

The "ruffled pawn" was a calico or linen valance which was hung on the edge of the mantel-shelf, a pretty and cheerful fashion seen in some English as well as Dutch homes.

Another Dutch furnishing, the alcove bedstead, much like a closet, seen in many New York kitchens, was replaced in New England farm-kitchens by the "turn-up" bedstead. This was a strong frame filled with a network of rope which was fastened at the bed-head by hinges to the wall. By night the foot of the bed rested on two heavy legs; by day the frame with its bed furnishings was hooked up to the wall, and covered with homespun curtains or doors. This was the sleeping-place of the master and mistress of the house, chosen because the kitchen was the warmest room in the house. One of these "turn-up" bedsteads which was used in the Sheldon homestead until this century may be seen in Deerfield Memorial Hall.

Over the fireplace and across the top of the room were long poles on which hung strings of peppers, dried apples, and rings of dried pumpkin. And the favorite resting-place for the old queen's-arm or fowling-piece was on hooks over the kitchen fireplace.

On the pothooks and trammels hung what formed in some households the costliest house-furnishing,—the pots and kettles. The Indians wished their brass kettles buried with them as a precious possession, and the settlers equally valued them; often these kettles were worth three pounds apiece. In many inventories of the estates of the settlers the brass-ware formed an important item. Rev. Thomas Hooker of Hartford had brass-ware which, in the equalizing of values to-day, would be worth three or four hundred dollars. The great brass and copper kettles often held fifteen gallons. The vast iron pot—desired and beloved of every colonist—sometimes weighed forty pounds, and lasted in daily use for many years. All the vegetables were boiled together in these great pots, unless some very particular housewife had a wrought-iron potato-boiler to hold potatoes or any single vegetable in place within the vast general pot.

Chafing-dishes and skimmers of brass and copper were also cheerful discs to reflect the kitchen firelight.

Very little tin was seen, either for kitchen or table utensils. Governor Winthrop had a few tin plates, and some Southern planters had tin pans, others "tynnen covers." Tin pails were unknown; and the pails they did own, either of wood, brass, or other sheet metal, had no bails, but were carried by thrusting a stick through little ears on either side of the pail. Latten ware was used instead of tin; it was a kind of brass. A very good collection of century-old tinware is shown in the illustration. By a curious chance this tinware lay unpacked for over ninety years in the attic loft of a country warehouse, in the packing-box, just as it was delivered from an English ship at the close of the Revolution. The pulling down of the warehouse disclosed the box, with its dated labels. The tin utensils are more gayly lacquered than modern ones, otherwise they differ little from the tinware of to-day.

There was one distinct characteristic in the house-furnishing of olden times which is lacking to-day. It was a tendency for the main body of everything to set well up, on legs which were strong enough for adequate support of the weight, yet were slender in appearance. To-day bureaus, bedsteads, cabinets, desks, sideboards, come close to the floor; formerly chests of drawers, Chippendale sideboards, four-post bedsteads, dressing-cases, were set, often a foot high, in a tidy, cleanly fashion; thus they could all be thoroughly swept under. This same peculiarity of form extended to cooking-utensils. Pots and kettles had legs, as shown in those hanging in the slave-kitchen fireplace; gridirons had legs, skillets had legs; and further appliances in the shape of trivets, which were movable frames, took the place of legs. The necessity for the stilting up of cooking-utensils was a very evident one; it was necessary to raise the body of the utensil above the ashes and coals of the open fireplace. If the bed of coals and burning logs were too deep for the skillet or pot-legs, then the utensil must be hung from above by the ever-ready trammel.

Often in the corner of the fireplace there stood a group of trivets, or three-legged stands, of varying heights, through which the exactly desired proximity to the coals could be obtained.

Even toasting-forks, and similar frail utensils of wire or wrought iron, stood on tall, spindling legs, or were carefully shaped to be set up on trivets. They usually had, also, long, adjustable handles, which helped to make endurable the blazing heat of the great logs. All such irons as waffle-irons had far longer handles than are seen on any cooking-utensils in these days of stoves and ranges, where the flames are covered and the housewife shielded. Gridirons had long handles of wood or iron, which could be fastened to the shorter stationary handles. The two gridirons in the accompanying illustration are a century old. The circular one was the oldest form. The oblong ones, with groove to collect the gravy, did not vary in shape till our own day. Both have indications of fittings for long handles, but the handles have vanished. A long-handled frying-pan is seen hanging by the side of the slave-kitchen fireplace.

An accompaniment of the kitchen fireplace, found, not in farmhouses, but among luxury-loving town-folk, was the plate-warmer. They are seldom named in inventories, and I know of but one of Revolutionary days, and it is here shown. Similar ones are manufactured to-day; the legs, perhaps, are shorter, but the general outline is the same.

An important furnishing of every fireplace was the andirons. In kitchen fireplaces these were usually of iron, and the shape known as goose-neck were common. Cob irons were the simplest form, and merely supported the spit; sometimes they had hooks to hold a dripping-pan. A common name for the kitchen andirons was fire-dogs; and creepers were low, small andirons, usually used with the tall fire-dogs. The kitchen andirons were simply for use to help hold the logs and cooking-utensils. But other fireplaces had handsome fire-dogs of copper, brass, or cut steel, cast or wrought in handsome devices. These were a pride and delight to the housewife.

A primitive method of roasting a joint of meat or a fowl was by suspending it in front of the fire by a strong hempen string tied to a peg in the ceiling, while some one—usually an unwilling child—occasionally turned the roast around. Sometimes the sole turnspit was the housewife, who, every time she basted the roast, gave the string a good twist, and thereafter it would untwist, and then twist a little again, and so on until the vibration ceased, when she again basted and started it. As the juices sometimes ran down in the roast and left the upper part too dry, a "double string-roaster" was invented, by which the equilibrium of the joint could be shifted. A jack was a convenient and magnified edition of the primitive string, being a metal suspensory machine. A still further glorification was the addition of a revolving power which ran by clockwork and turned the roast with regularity; this was known as a clock-jack. The one here shown hangs in the fireplace in Deerfield Memorial Hall. A smoke-jack was run somewhat irregularly by the pressure of smoke and the current of hot air in the chimney. These were noisy and creaking and not regarded with favor by old-fashioned cooks.

We are apt to think of the turnspit dog as a creature of European life, but we had them here in America—little low, bow-legged, patient souls, trained to run in a revolving cylinder and keep the roasting joint a-turn before the fire. Mine host Clark of the State House Inn in Philadelphia in the first half of the eighteenth century advertised in Benjamin Franklin's Pennsylvania Gazette that he had for sale "several dogs and wheels, much preferable to any jacks for roasting any joints of meat." I hope neither he nor any one else had many of these little canine slaves.

A frequent accompaniment of the kitchen fireplace in the eighteenth century, and a domestic luxury seen in well-to-do homes, was the various forms of the "roasting-kitchen," or Dutch oven. These succeeded the jacks; they were a box-like arrangement open on one side which when in use was turned to the fire. Like other utensils of the day, they often stood up on legs, to bring the open side before the blaze. A little door at the back could be opened for convenience in basting the roast. These kitchens came in various sizes for roasting birds or joints, and in them bread was occasionally baked. The bake-kettle, which in some communities was also called a Dutch oven, was preferred for baking bread. It was a strong kettle, standing, of course, on stout, stumpy legs, and when in use was placed among the hot coals and closely covered with a strong metal, convex cover, on which coals were also closely heaped. Such perfect rolls, such biscuit, such shortcake, as issued from the heaped-up bake-kettle can never be equalled by other methods of cooking.

When the great stone chimney was built, there was usually placed on one side of the kitchen fireplace a brick oven which had a smoke uptake into the chimney—and-an ash-pit below. The great door was of iron. This oven was usually heated once a week. A great fire of dry wood, called oven wood, was kindled within it and kept burning fiercely for some hours. This thoroughly heated all the bricks. The coals and ashes were then swept out, the chimney draught closed, and the oven filled with brown bread, pies, pots of beans, etc. Sometimes the bread was baked in pans, sometimes it was baked in a great mass set on cabbage leaves or oak leaves. In some towns an autumn harvest of oak leaves was gathered by children to use throughout the winter. The leaves were strung on sticks. This gathering was called going a-leafing.

By the oven side was always a long-handled shovel known as a peel or slice, which sometimes had a rack or rest to hold it; this implement was a necessity in order to place the food well within the glowing oven. The peel was sprinkled with meal, great heaps of dough were placed thereon, and by a dexterous twist they were thrown on the cabbage or oak leaves. A bread peel was a universal gift to a bride; it was significant of domestic utility and plenty, and was held to be luck-bearing. On Thanksgiving week the great oven had a fire built in it every morning, and every night it was well filled and closed till morning.

On one side of the kitchen often stood a dresser, on which was placed in orderly rows the cheerful pewter and scant earthenware of the household:—

In Dutch households plate-racks, spoon-racks, knife-racks,—all hanging on the wall,—took the place of the New England dresser.

In the old Phillips farmhouse at Wickford, Rhode Island, is a splendid chimney over twenty feet square. So much room does it occupy that there is no central staircase, but little winding stairs ascend at three corners of the house. In the vast fireplace an ox could literally have been roasted. On each chimney-piece are hooks to hang firearms, and at one side curious little drawers are set for pipes and tobacco. In some Dutch houses in New York these tobacco shelves are in the entry, over the front door, and a narrow flight of three or four steps leads up to them. Hanging on a nail alongside the tobacco drawer, or shelf, would usually be seen a pipe-tongs, or smoking-tongs. They were slender little tongs, usually of iron or steel; with them the smoker lifted a coal from the fireplace to light his pipe. The tongs owned and used by Captain Joshua Wingate, of Hampton, New Hampshire, who lived from 1679 to 1769, are here shown. The handle is unlike any other I have seen, having one end elongated, knobbed, and ingeniously bent S-shaped into convenient form to press down the tobacco into the bowl of the pipe. Other old-time pipe-tongs were in the form of lazy-tongs. A companion of the pipe-tongs on the kitchen mantel was what was known as a comfortier—a little brazier of metal in which small coals could be handed about for pipe-lighting. An unusual luxury was a comfortier of silver. These were found among the Dutch settlers.

The Pennsylvania Germans were the first to use stoves. These were of various shapes. A curious one, seen in houses and churches, was of sheet-metal, box-shaped; three sides were within the house, and the fourth, with the stove door, outside the house. Thus what was really the back of the stove projected into the room, and when the fire was fed it was necessary for the tender to go out of doors. These German stoves and hot-air drums, which heated the second story of the house, were ever a fresh wonder to travellers of English birth and descent in Pennsylvania. There is no doubt that their evident economy and comfort suggested to Benjamin Franklin the "New Pennsylvania Fireplace," which he invented in 1742, in which both wood and coal could be used, and which was somewhat like the heating apparatus which we now call a Franklin stove, or heater.

Thus German settlers had, in respect to heating, the most comfortable homes of all the colonies. Among the English settlers the kitchen was, too often, the only comfortable room in the house in winter weather. Indeed, the discomforts and inconveniences of a colonial home could scarcely be endured to-day; of course these culminated in the winter time, when icy blasts blew fiercely down the great chimneys, and rattled the loosely fitting windows. Children suffered bitterly in these cold houses. The rooms were not warm three feet away from the blaze of the fire. Cotton Mather and Judge Samuel Sewall both tell, in their diaries, of the ink freezing in their pens as they wrote within the chimney-side. One noted that, when a great fire was built on the hearth, the sap forced out of the wood by the flames froze into ice at the end of the logs. The bedrooms were seldom warmed, and had it not been for the deep feather beds and heavy bed-curtains, would have been unendurable. In Dutch and some German houses, with alcove bedsteads, and sleeping on one feather bed, with another for cover, the Dutch settlers could be far warmer than any English settlers, even in four-post bedsteads curtained with woollen.

Water froze immediately if left standing in bedrooms. One diary, written in Marshfield, Massachusetts, tells of a basin of water standing on the bedroom hearth, in front of a blazing fire, in which the water froze solid. President John Adams so dreaded the bleak New England winter and the ill-warmed houses that he longed to sleep like a dormouse every year, from autumn to spring. In the Southern colonies, during the fewer cold days of the winter months, the temperature was not so low, but the houses were more open and lightly built than in the North, and were without cellars, and had fewer fireplaces; hence the discomfort from the cold was as great, if not the positive suffering.

The first chilling entrance into the ice-cold bed of a winter bedroom was sometimes mitigated by heating the inner sheets with a warming-pan. This usually hung by the side of the kitchen fireplace, and when used was filled with hot coals, and thrust within the bed, and constantly and rapidly moved back and forth to keep from scorching the bed-linen. The warming-pan was a circular metal pan about a foot in diameter, four or five inches deep, with a long wooden handle and a perforated metal cover, usually of copper or brass, which was kept highly polished, and formed, as it hung on the wall, one of the cheerful kitchen discs to reflect the light of the glowing fire. The warming-pan has been deemed of sufficient decorative capacity to make it eagerly sought after by collectors, and a great room of one of these collectors is hung entirely around the four walls with a frieze of warming-pans.

Many of our New England poets have given us glimpses in rhyme of the old-time kitchen. Lowell's well-known lines are vivid enough to bear never-dying quotation:—

To me the true essence of the old-time fireside is found in Whittier's Snow-Bound. The very chimney, fireplace, and hearthstone of which his beautiful lines were written, the kitchen of Whittier's boyhood's home, at East Haverhill, Massachusetts, is shown in the accompanying illustration. It shows a swinging crane. His description of the "laying the fire" can never be equalled by any prose:—

No greater picture of homely contentment could be shown than the following lines:—

Nor can the passing of years dim the ruddy glow of that hearth-fire, nor the charm of the poem. The simplicity of metre, the purity of wording, the gentle sadness of some of its expressions, make us read between the lines the deep and affectionate reminiscence with which it was written.

CHAPTER IV
THE SERVING OF MEALS

Perhaps no greater difference exists between any mode of the olden times and that of to-day, than can be seen in the manner of serving the meals of the family. In the first place, the very dining-table of the colonists was not like our present ones; it was a long and narrow board, sometimes but three feet wide, with no legs attached to it. It was laid on supports or trestles, shaped usually something like a saw-horse. Thus it was literally a board, and was called a table-board, and the linen cover used at meals was not called a tablecloth, but a board-cloth or board-clothes.

As smoothly sawed and finished boards were not so plentiful at first in the colonies as might naturally be thought when we remember the vast encircling forests, all such boards were carefully treasured, and used many times to avoid sawing others by the tedious and wearying process of pit-sawing. Hence portions of packing-boxes, or chests which had carried stores from England to the colonies, were made into table-boards. One such oaken table-board, still in existence, has on the under side in quaint lettering the name and address of the Boston settler to whom the original packing-box was sent in 1638.

The old-time board-cloth was in no way inferior in quality or whiteness to our present table-linen; for we know how proud colonial wives and daughters were of the linen of their own spinning, weaving, and bleaching. The linen tablecloth was either of holland, huckaback, dowlas, osnaburg, or lockram—all heavy and comparatively coarse materials—or of fine damask, just as to-day; some of the handsome board-cloths were even trimmed with lace.

The colonists had plenty of napkins; more, as a rule, than families of corresponding means and station own to-day. They had need of them, for when America was first settled forks were almost unknown to English people—being used for eating in luxurious Italy alone, where travellers having seen and found them useful and cleanly, afterwards introduced them into England. So hands had to be constantly employed for holding food, instead of the forks we now use, and napkins were therefore as constantly necessary. The first fork brought to America was for Governor John Winthrop, in Boston, in 1633, and it was in a leather case with a knife and a bodkin. If the governor ate with a fork at the table, he was doubtless the only person in the colony who did so. Thirty or forty years later a few two-tined iron and silver forks were brought across the water, and used in New York and Virginia, as well as Massachusetts; and by the end of the century they had come into scant use at the tables of persons of wealth and fashion. The first mention of a fork in Virginia is in an inventory dated 1677; this was of a single fork. The salt-cellar, or saler, as it was first called, was the centrepiece of the table—"Sett in the myddys of the tabull," says an old treatise on laying the table. It was often large and high, of curious device in silver, and was then called a standing salt. Guests of honor were seated "above the salt," that is, near the end of the table where sat the host and hostess side by side; while children and persons who were not of much dignity or account as guests were placed "below the salt," that is, below the middle of the table.

There is owned by Harvard University, and here shown in an illustration, "a great silver salt" given to the college in 1644, when the new seat of learning was but eight years old. At the table it divided graduates, the faculty, and such, from the undergraduates. It was valued at £5 1s. 3d., at five shillings an ounce, which was equal to a hundred dollars to-day; a rich gift, which shows to me the profound affection of the settlers for the new college. It is inscribed with the name of the giver, Mr. Richard Harris. It is of simple English design well known during that century, and made in various sizes. There is no doubt that many of similar pattern, though not so heavy or so rich, were seen on the tables of substantial colonists. They are named in many wills. Often a small projecting arm was attached to one side, over which a folded napkin could be thrown to be used as a cover; for the salt-cellar was usually kept covered, not only to preserve cleanliness, but in earlier days to prevent the ready introduction of poison.

There are some very entertaining and curious old English books which were written in the sixteenth century to teach children and young rustics correct and elegant manners at the table, and also helpful ways in which to serve others. These books are called The Babees Boke, The Boke of Nurture, The Boke of Curteseye, etc., and with the exception of variations in the way of serving a dinner, and a few obsolete customs, and in the names and shapes and materials of the different dishes, plates, etc., used at the table, these books are just as instructive and sensible to-day as then. From them we learn that the only kind of table furnishings used at that time were cups to drink out of; spoons and knives to eat with; chafing-dishes to serve hot food; chargers for display and for serving large quantities of food; salt-cellars, and trenchers for use as plates. There were very few other table appointments used on any English table, either humble or great, when the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth.

One of the most important articles for setting the table was the trencher. These were made of wood, and often were only a block of wood, about ten or twelve inches square and three or four deep, hollowed down into a sort of bowl in the middle. In this the food was placed,—porridge, meat, vegetables, etc. Each person did not have even one of these simple dishes; usually two children, or a man and his wife, ate out of one trencher. This was a custom in England for many years; and some very great people, a duke and his wife, not more than a century and a half ago, sat side by side at the table and ate out of one plate to show their unity and affection. It is told of an old Connecticut settler, a deacon, that as he had a wood-turning mill, he thought he would have a trencher apiece for his children. So he turned a sufficient number of round trenchers in his mill. For this his neighbors deemed him deeply extravagant and putting on too many airs, both as to quantity and quality, since square trenchers, one for use by two persons, were good enough for any one, even a deacon. So great a warrior and so prominent a man in the colony as Miles Standish used wooden trenchers at the table, as also did all the early governors. Nor did they disdain to name them in their wills, as valued household possessions. For many years college boys at Harvard ate out of wooden trenchers at the college mess-table.

I have seen a curious old table top, or table-board, which permitted diners seated at it to dispense with trenchers or plates. It was of heavy oak about six inches thick, and at intervals of about eighteen inches around its edge were scooped out deep, bowl-shaped holes about ten inches in diameter, in which each individual's share of the dinner was placed. After each meal the top was lifted off the trestles, thoroughly washed and dried, and was ready for the next meal.

Poplar-wood is an even, white, and shining wood. Until the middle of this century poplar-wood trenchers and plates were used on the table in Vermont, and were really attractive dishes. From earliest days the Indians made and sold many bowls and trenchers of maple-wood knots. One of these bowls, owned by King Philip, is at the rooms of the Massachusetts Historical Society in Boston. Old wooden trenchers and "Indian bowls" can be seen at the Memorial Hall in Deerfield. Bottles were made also of wood, and drinking-cups and "noggins," which were a sort of mug with a handle. Wood furnished many articles for the table to the colonist, just as it did in later days on our Western frontiers, where trenchers of wood and plates of birch-bark were seen in every log-cabin.

The word tankard was originally applied to a heavy and large vessel of wood banded with metal, in which to carry water. Smaller wooden drinking tankards were subsequently made and used throughout Europe, and were occasionally brought here by the colonists. The plainly shaped wooden tankard, made of staves and hoops and here shown, is from the collection at Deerfield Memorial Hall. It was found in the house of Rev. Eli Moody. These commonplace tankards of staves were not so rare as the beautiful carved and hooped tankard which is here pictured, and which is in the collection of Mrs. Samuel Bowne Duryea, of Brooklyn. I have seen a few other quaintly carved ones, black with age, in American families of Huguenot descent; these were apparently Swiss carvings.

The chargers, or large round platters found on every dining-table, were of pewter. Some were so big and heavy that they weighed five or six pounds apiece. Pewter is a metal never seen for modern table furnishing, or domestic use in any form to-day; but in colonial times what was called a garnish of pewter, that is, a full set of pewter platters, plates, and dishes, was the pride of every good housekeeper, and also a favorite wedding gift. It was kept as bright and shining as silver. One of the duties of children was to gather a kind of horse-tail rush which grew in the marshes, and because it was used to scour pewter, was called scouring-rush.

Pewter bottles of various sizes were sent to the Massachusetts Bay Colony, in 1629. Governor Endicott had one, but they were certainly far from common. Dram cups, wine mugs, and funnels of pewter were also occasionally seen, but scarcely formed part of ordinary table furnishings. Metheglin cans and drinking-mugs of pewter were found on nearly every table. Pewter was used until this century in the wealthiest homes, both in the North and South, and was preferred by many who owned rich china. Among the pewter-lovers was the Revolutionary patriot, John Hancock, who hated the clatter of the porcelain plates.

Porringers of pewter, and occasionally of silver, were much used at the table, chiefly for children to eat from. These were a pretty little shallow circular dish with a flat-pierced handle. Some had a "fish-tail" handle; these are said to be Dutch. These porringers were in many sizes, from tiny little ones two inches in diameter to those eight or nine inches across. When not in use many housekeepers kept them hanging on hooks on the edge of a shelf, where they formed a pretty and cheerful decoration. The poet Swift says:—