I find that I gain the best idea of what these first houses in America were like, by asking myself how I should have built, in the conditions under which the settlers worked, dropped down in a little forest-clearing, the ocean before and the Indians behind, with few and imperfect tools, and with a pressure all the while of securing food for to-day, and sowing grain for to-morrow. I am sure I should have put up a shelter of the rudest kind that could be trusted to withstand the winds of Autumn, and the storms of Winter. I should not have planed my beams, nor matched my floorboards. Only my doors and shutters I should have made both strong and stout, to meet the gales from the sea, or a sudden dash from lurking savages in the bush. This I find, therefore, without surprise, was just what the settlers did. They divided the house into a kitchen and a bedroom, with a shed joined on for the goats and pigs, or, if the owner were so lucky, a cow. Their chimneys were chiefly constructed out of twigs plastered on both sides with clay, which dried in the sun, and served for some time, before it crumbled again to dust. As there were no mills, the corn-grinding had to be done at home; so the settlers, learning the trick from the Indians, improvised a mortar, by burning out the stump of a tree into a hollow, and hanging over it a log, suspended from the limb of a tree close at hand, for a pestle. This was hard work, and the grinding in the little hand-mills brought from England was scarcely easier. A dying man, leaving his children to their uncle's care, expressly stipulated that they should not be put to the drudgery of pounding corn. [Illustration] Within the house, stood the great and small wheels for wool and flax, the carding-comb and the moulds for making those candles, of green myrtleberry wax which, as Beverly writes, "are never greasie to the touch, nor melt with lying in the hottest weather. Neither does the snuff of these ever offend the smell, like that of a tallow-candle; but instead of being disagreeable, if an accident puts a candle out, it yields a pleasant fragrancy to all that are in the room, insomuch that nice people often put them out on purpose to have the incense of the expiring snuff." It was no pitiable life that those pioneers lived, even in those most primitive days. Their out-of-door existence was full of a wild charm, and their energy soon improved conditions indoors. Every ship from England brought over conveniences and luxuries. The cabin was exchanged for a substantial house. First pewter, and then silver plate began to shine on sideboards of polished oak. Four-post bedsteads decorated the sleeping rooms, and tapestry curtains kept out the cold.