Milk became a very important part of the food of families in the eighteenth century. In 1728 a discussion took place in the Boston newspapers as to the expense of keeping a family "of middling figure." These writers all named only bread and milk for breakfast and supper. Ten years later a minister, calculating the expenses of his family, set down bread and milk for both breakfast and supper. Milk and hasty pudding, milk and stewed pumpkin, milk and baked apples, milk and berries, were variations. In winter, when milk was scarce, sweetened cider diluted with water was used instead. Sometimes bread was soaked with this mixture. It is said that children were usually very fond of it. As comparatively few New England families in the seventeenth century owned churns, I cannot think that many made butter; of course families of wealth ate it, but it was not common as to-day. In the inventories of the property of the early settlers of Maine there is but one churn named. Butter was worth from threepence to sixpence a pound. As cattle increased the duties of the dairy grew, and soon were never-ceasing and ever-tiring. The care of cream and making of butter was in the eighteenth century the duty of every good wife and dame in the country, and usually in the town. Though the shape and ease of action of churns varied, still butter-making itself varied little from the same work to-day. Several old-time churns are shown, the revolving one being the most unusual. Cheese was plentiful and good in all the Northern colonies. It was also an unending care from the time the milk was set over the fire to warm and then to curdle; through the breaking of the curds in the cheese-basket; through shaping into cheeses and pressing in the cheese-press, placing them on the cheese-ladders, and constantly turning and rubbing them. An old cheese-press, cheese-ladder, and cheese-basket from Deerfield Memorial Hall are shown in the illustration. In all households, even in those of great wealth and many servants, assistance was given in all housewifery by the daughters of the household. In the South it was chiefly by superintendence and teaching through actual exposition the negro slaves; in the North it was by the careful performance of the work. The manuscript cooking receipt-book of many an ancient dame shows the great care they took in family cooking. English methods of cooking at the time of the settlement of this country were very complicated and very laborious.