DANVIS FARM LIFE 57 



all meals were taken, guests entertained, and 

 merry-makings held. At one end was the great 

 fireplace wherein back-log and fore-stick burned, 

 sending forth warmth and light, intense and bright 

 over the broad hearth, but growing feebler to- 

 ward the dim comers where Jack Frost lurked and 

 grotesque shadows leaped and danced on the wall. 

 On the crane, suspended by hook or trammel, 

 hung the big samp-kettle, bubbling and seeth- 

 ing. The open dresser shone with polished pewter 

 mug and trencher. Old-fashioned, splint-bottomed 

 chairs, rude but comfortable, sent their long shad- 

 ows across the floor. 



The tall clock measured the moments with de- 

 liberate tick. The big wheel and little, the one for 

 wool, the other for flax; the poles overhead, with 

 their garniture of winter crooknecks and festoons 

 of dried apples; the long-barreled flintlock that 

 had borne its part in Indian fight, at Bennington, 

 and in many a wolf and bear hunt, hanging with 

 powder-horn and bullet-pouch against the chim- 

 ney — all these made up a homely interior far 

 more picturesque than any to be found in mod- 

 em farmhouses. Those who remember old-time 

 cookery aver that in these degenerate days there 

 are no johnny-cakes so sweet as those our grand- 

 m others baked on a board on the hearth, no roast 

 ^^■leats so juicy as those which slowly turned on 

 ^^ft>its before the open fire, nor any brown bread or 



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