Think of the quantity of food to be provided! And yet, a housewife's _batterie de cuisine_ was of the simplest. The kitchen fireplace held the iron pot for boiling the indispensable and much-respected gammon of bacon (Virginia ham), and there were lidded ovens, large and small, standing high on four feet, that coals might burn brightly beneath them. There was a "skillet," with its ever ascending incense from frying chickens and batter-cakes,--a long-handled utensil with no feet at all, but resting upon the portable, triangular "trevet,"--which, being light, could be thrust into the very heart of the fire or drawn out on the fire-proof dirt floor. There was a "hoe," known as a cooking utensil only in Virginia, slanting before the coals for the thin hoe-cake of Indian meal. In front stood the glory and pride of the kitchen,--the spit, like two tall andirons with deeply serrated sides, on which iron rods holding flesh and fowl could rest and be turned to roast equally. An ample pan beneath caught the basting-butter and juices of the meat. This spit held an exposed position, and has been known to be robbed now and then by some unmannerly hound, or wandering Caleb Balderstone, unable to resist such temptations. What would the modern queen of the kitchen think of "a situation" involving such trials,--her own wood often to be brought by herself, her breakfast, including four or five kinds of bread (waffles, biscuit thick and thin, batter-cakes, loaf bread), her poultry to be killed and plucked by herself, her coffee to be roasted, fish scaled and cleaned, meats cut from a carcass and trimmed, to say nothing of cakes, puddings, and pies? And all this to be done for a perennial house-party, with its footmen and maids! True, the negro cook of colonial times had many "kitchen-maids,"--her own children. But even with these her achievements were almost supernatural. With her half-dozen utensils she served a dinner that deserved--and _has_--immortality! "Old Phyllis," the cook at "Blenheim," "Mammy Lucy" at Cleveland, and many others have a high place in an old Virginian's Hall of Fame,--his heart!