In the kitchen, food was cooked over the coals of a great fireplace or in the brick oven connected with that fireplace. Meat was supplied from a neighboring farm; eggs were the product of the housewife's own poultry yard; the son or daughter of the farmer milked the cow and drove her to and from the pasture; the milk was "set" in pans in the cellar--on a swinging shelf, preferably, to make it inaccessible to the rats; and twice a week the cream was made into butter in a primitive churn, the dasher of which was operated by the vigorous arm of the housewife herself, or by the unwilling arms of some one of her numerous progeny. To give variety to the dietary, fruits grown in the local garden or orchard were preserved, each in its season, by the industrious housewife, and stored away in the capacious cellar; where also might be found the supply of home-grown potatoes, turnips, carrots, parsnips, and cabbages to provide for the needs of the winter. Fuel to supply the household needs, both for cooking and heating, was cut in the neighboring woodland, and carefully corded in the door-yard, where it provided most uncongenial employment for the youth of the family after school hours and of a Saturday afternoon. The ashes produced when this wood was burned in the various fireplaces, were not wasted, but were carefully deposited in barrels, from which in due course lye was extracted by the simple process of pouring water over the contents of the barrel. Meantime scraps of fat from the table were collected throughout the winter and preserved with equal care; and in due course on some leisure day in the springtime--heaven knows how a leisure day was ever found in such a scheme of domestic economy!--the lye drawn from the ash-barrels and the scraps of fat were put into a gigantic kettle, underneath which a fire was kindled; with the result that ultimately a supply of soft soap was provided the housewife, with which her entire establishment, progeny included, could be kept in a state of relative cleanness. The reader of these pages has but to cast his eye about him in the household in which he lives, and contrast the conditions just depicted with those of his every-day life, to realize what change has come over the aspects of household economy in the course of a short century. Nor need he be told in each of the various departments of which the activities are here outlined, that the changes which he observes have been due to the application of machinery in all the essential lines of work in question. We need not pause to detail the multitudinous devices for the economy of household labor which owe their origin to the same agency. There still remains, to be sure, enough of drudgery in the task of the housewife; yet her most strenuous day seems a mere playtime in comparison with the average day of her maternal forebear of three or four generations ago.