A flint-lock pistol. This operated just as did the flint-lock gun. FIGURE 11 The warming-pan. In most houses the only warm place was by the kitchen fire. In winter the bedrooms were about as cold as the weather out of doors. This made the beds far from comfortable to get into on a cold night. The warming-pan was a basin of brass or copper with a hinged cover, sometimes decorated. Hot ashes and coals from the kitchen fire were put into it; it was then carried to the bed and the hot pan was pushed up and down between the sheets until the whole bed was warm. FIGURE 12 Snuffers. Here, as in many of the other pictures in this book, a tea-cup and saucer are placed near the drawing of the object to be described. This is added to give a correct idea of the relative size of the objects represented. In each case the object to be described and the tea-cup are drawn to the same scale; and, as you know about how large a tea-cup is, you get a clear idea of the size of the object by which it stands. Snuffers were used to snip off the end of a candle wick. As the tallow or wax melted and burned, the top of the wick, although it was burned to a mere black bit of coal, held fast to the part of the wick which still continued to draw up the melted tallow into the flame. If this black end was not now and then picked off with the snuffers, or some other instrument, or with the fingers, it dropped over and perhaps hit the top of the candle and kept it from burning bright and clear. The snuffers are like a pair of scissors, with a box on one blade and a cover for the box on the other. When used they were handled like a pair of scissors and the black end of the wick was snipped into the box out of sight and harm. The pointed end of one blade was used to prick up the wick if it did not stand straight or was too tightly twisted. The three legs kept the snuffers, which were sooty on the under side from being stuck into the candle flame, away from the table or the tray where they were usually kept. The candles of to-day do not often need to be snuffed, because as their wicks, which are carefully twisted, are burned free of the tallow, wax or paraffin, they bend a little in the effort to untwist. This bending thrusts the used-up end sidewise into the hot, outer flame and there it is quite burned up. In old days the wicks were not twisted much, if at all, and so, as the candle melted from them,—they stuck up into the dull, smoky, non-burning part of the flame, and stayed there until they hung over or fell off. FIGURE 13