POINTS ABOUT BEESWAX 127 



THE PRIMITIVE METHOD 



The process of making wax from honey-comb 

 may be primitive and yet quite successful. Well do 

 we remember the method as practised in the days 

 of our early youth in the kitchen of the old farm- 

 house, usually a comfortable and altogether delight- 

 ful room. Its yellow-painted floor seemed to have 

 caught the sunshine streaming in through white- 

 curtained windows and held it there for us to tread 

 upon. The chintz-covered settee and Boston rockers, 

 and a few widths of bright rag carpet, made one end 

 a cozy sitting-room. At the opposite end the cup- 

 boards, their shelves covered with elaborately scal- 

 loped newspapers, and beset with orderly dishes and 

 tinware, bespoke the kitchen. Midway between 

 stood the heavy cherry drop-leaf table which revealed 

 the dining-room; in the midst of this Protean apart- 

 ment stood the cook-stove, polished so that it would 

 put to shame the rosewood case of a piano, bearing 

 on its top the pink-copper tea-kettle singing gayly 

 after its daily bath of cleansing buttermilk, and 

 holding within the roaring fire which ever seemed 

 the spirit and soul of the place. The neatness that 

 held sway in this kitchen was the perfect sort that 

 conduces to comfort, and not to misery. Only 

 at certain periods was this delectable room given 

 over to discomfort and untidiness; these included 

 "wash-days," the days following the yearly sacrificial 

 rite of butchering and the days when beeswax 

 was made. 



