Contents Page I. Homes of the Colonists 1 II. The Light of Other Days 32 III. The Kitchen Fireside 52 IV. The Serving of Meals 76 V. Food from Forest and Sea 108 VI. Indian Corn 126 VII. Meat and Drink 142 VIII. Flax Culture and Spinning 166 IX. Wool Culture and Spinning, with a Postscript on Cotton 187 X. Hand-Weaving 212 XI. Girls' Occupations 252 XII. Dress of the Colonists 281 XIII. Jack-knife Industries 300 XIV. Travel, Transportation, and Taverns 325 XV. Sunday in the Colonies 364 XVI. Colonial Neighborliness 388 XVII. Old-time Flower Gardens 421 Home Life in Colonial Days CHAPTER I HOMES OF THE COLONISTS When the first settlers landed on American shores, the difficulties in finding or making shelter must have seemed ironical as well as almost unbearable. The colonists found a land magnificent with forest trees of every size and variety, but they had no sawmills, and few saws to cut boards; there was plenty of clay and ample limestone on every side, yet they could have no brick and no mortar; grand boulders of granite and rock were everywhere, yet there was not a single facility for cutting, drawing, or using stone. These homeless men, so sorely in need of immediate shelter, were baffled by pioneer conditions, and had to turn to many poor expedients, and be satisfied with rude covering. In Pennsylvania, New York, Massachusetts, and, possibly, other states, some reverted to an ancient form of shelter: they became cave-dwellers; caves were dug in the side of a hill, and lived in till the settlers could have time to chop down and cut up trees for log houses. Cornelis Van Tienhoven, Secretary of the Province of New Netherland, gives a description of these cave-dwellings, and says that "the wealthy and principal men in New England lived in this fashion for two reasons: first, not to waste time building; second, not to discourage poorer laboring people." It is to be doubted whether wealthy men ever lived in them in New England, but Johnson, in his _Wonder-working Providence_, written in 1645, tells of the occasional use of these "smoaky homes." They were speedily abandoned, and no records remain of permanent cave-homes in New England.