Under New England and New York farm-houses was a cellar filled with bins for vegetables and apples. As the winter passed on there rose from these cellars a curious, earthy, appley smell, which always seemed most powerful in the best parlor, the room least used. How Schiller, who loved the scent of rotten apples, would have rejoiced! The cellar also contained many barrels of cider; for the beauty of the Apple trees, and the use of their fruit as food, were not the only factors which influenced the planting of the many Apple orchards of the new world; they afforded a universal drink--cider. I have written at length, in my books, _Home Life in Colonial Days_ and _Stage-Coach and Tavern Days_, the history of the vogue and manufacture of cider in the new world. The cherished Apple orchards of Endicott, Blackstone, Wolcott, and Winthrop were so speedily multiplied that by 1670 cider was plentiful and cheap everywhere. By the opening of the eighteenth century it had wholly crowded out beer and metheglin; and was the drink of old and young on all occasions. [Illustration: Old Horse-lever Cider Mill.] At first, cider was made by pounding the Apples by hand in wooden mortars; then simple mills were formed of a hollowed log and a spring board. Rude hand presses, such as are shown on pages 198 and 200, were known in 1660, and lingered to our own day. Kalm, the Swedish naturalist, saw ancient horse presses (like the one depicted on this page) in use in the Hudson River Valley in 1749. In autumn the whole country-side was scented with the sour, fruity smell from these cider mills; and the gift of a draught of sweet cider to any passer-by was as ample and free as of water from the brookside. The cider when barrelled and stored for winter was equally free to all comers, as well it might be, when many families stored a hundred barrels for winter use. [Illustration: "Straining off" the Cider.]