104 OLD-TIME
over night in cold water. It was additionally sea-
soned with salt and small bits of pepper-pods, and
was a staple article of diet, being made as often as
once a week, summer and winter; took kindly to
repeated warmings over, and was a popular dish with

_the children, brown bread or wheaten being crum-

bled liberally into the steaming bowl.
Plenty of wheat was produced as I have told you,
and ryealso. It was all threshed with hand flails. I

always think when I see a threshing-machine that
A good

the poetry of farm-life is almost gone.

  
  

    
   
  

COOKERY.

the many purposes for which we use barrels. When
flour or meal was needed, Mr. Whitney brought
forth his “fan,” put a few quarts of grain upon it,
and by a dexterous sleight tossed the grainup a few
inches, catching it on the fan when it came down, to
toss it up again. The grain and chaff soon began
mysteriously to separate, the chaff toward the front
and the grain to the back of the fan. At intervals
the chaff and dirt were brushed off and the process
renewed and repeated until the grain was perfectly
clean and ready for the bag. ‘he filled bags were

 
  
 
  
   
 
  
      

ipa,
Cleary was
Fae ead
My i" Kk | aK } is
SS alll fer a) IM,
tp WIL 9 3 ae
yn YLA SG ELLE YY

SOWING WHEAT.

thresher was very easy, leisurely and rythmical in
his movements; he brought his flail around with a
graceful swing very different from the might-and-
main blow which pictures often suggest. Two men
were accustomed to thresh on one floor. When one
flail went up the other came down; and though it
looked like easy work, it was not.

When the grain had been threshed and partially
cleaned from chaff, it was stored in the chamber in
hollow logs from which the bark had been stripped,
and the decayed wood on the inside scraped or
burned out. These primitive barrels were cut in sec-
tions about four feet long, set up on end, and served

piled upon the back of a horse which Cyrus led or
rode to mill.

Baking-day was the great day of the week. Mad:
ame Whitney was up betimes ; Cyrus was summoned,
and was expected to split a great pile of short oven-
wood before breakfast; and it was Sally’s duty
during the same time to have sifted the meal and
flour: three sievefuls of rye and three of cornmeal
into the bread-trough, a box as large as a baby cra-
dle, and strongly dovetailed together. The modern
mind fails to understand why these bread-troughs
were made so large; but it is a fact that they seldom
held less than two bushels. At each end of the