IND US TRIES AND FIRESIDES. 223 



some families and several good specimens are in the 

 town's collection. Linen sheets were commonly stiff and 

 cold until worn flexible, and their color was a light brown 

 unless unusual care was taken to bleach them. The 

 finer cloths were bleached by being laid upon the ground 

 in the sunshine, where they could be sprinkled and turned 

 and dried for several days until the color was drawn out. 



Thus by the culture of flax upon nearly every farm, 

 all linen cloths and linen thread for housekeepers or shoe- 

 makers were taken from the ground itself. 



The mention of shoemaker calls to mind another im- 

 portant part of clothing. Farmers' boots were parts of 

 their own cattle. When an animal was butchered, the 

 skin of it was rolled up and taken to one of the tanners, 

 — perhaps to Turtle Island, or in later years to the Lincoln 

 tannery near the mouth of Bound Brook, or to one at the 

 side of James Brook near the present Masonic Hall. 

 Other tanneries there might have been where hides were 

 soaked in the vats dug into the ground, and were tanned 

 by juices from the bark of our own oak and hemlock trees. 



The leather was made into boots and shoes for each 

 family either by themselves or by a journeying cobbler.* 

 This mender and maker of soles came annually to the 

 homes of his customers with his own lapstone and ham- 

 mer and awls to "shoe up" the whole family. He sat in 

 the corner and whittled out his wooden pegs from sticks 

 of white birch, hammered the leather, trimmed and sewed 

 and patched every kind of foot gear, from the baby's little 

 shoe to the great brogan of the farmer that must go 

 clumping through barnyard and forest. The stiff heavy 

 leather of the farmers' boots was kept pliable and water- 

 proof by repeated application of tallow.f From the 



*" He made bolhriglu .and left shoes upon the same last," says one old resident. 



tjames D. Lincoln has a tiny iron pot holding about a half pint in which 

 tallow was melted before the old fireplace. On many a winter's day before tiie 

 stiff boots were put on, they had to be softened by rubbing into th6 leather a quan- 

 tity of hot tallow. 



