THE OPEN WOOD FIRE. 



45 



over, each with its threads of ancestry taking the in- 

 habitants back to their predecessors in New England, 

 or again tracing the generations across to old England, 

 or binding the family ties with Scotland, or possibly 

 other parts of Europe. 



A crane, with its trammels, used to stretch out from 

 the jamb into the old fireplace, and a brass kettle hung 

 at its end, over the fire; and there was cooked on the 

 hearth the perennial mush for the evening meal in 

 pioneer days. Why, even after he had graduated 

 from the log cabin, father was still brought up on in- 

 numerable bowls of yellow cornmeal mush from the 

 begrimed and blackened old kettle. I have not eaten 

 mush boiled at the end of the crane, but I have helped 

 to boil down maple syrup in that fireplace, in the same 

 old kettle, after the sap had been reduced to a winy 

 consistency in the big caldrons at the camp, whence 

 it was brought up to simmer down still further into 

 thick, golden molasses in the open fireplace ; and I have^ 

 never felt so full of happiness and romance and poetry 

 as when, amid all these old associations, I made maple 

 syrup that year alone among the trees. The old crane 

 is still about the farm. The brass kettles are still used, 

 and the big iron ones do their duty annually either at 

 the sugar camp or in boiling potatoes for the hogs. 

 Longfellow's poem, "The Hanging of the Crane," 

 celebrates the beginning of household life, in a sort 

 of house-warming, 



" As in the chimney, burning bright, 

 We hung the iron crane to-night. 

 And merry was the feast and long." 



