Really, I am afraid many of you do not know how people lived in the old times. They are often spoken of as the "good old times." I fancy you will hardly think so when I have told you something more about them. Would you think it very good to have to get up in a freezing cold room, and go down and pump ice-cold water to wash your face, and go out in the snow to get wood to make the fire, and shiver for an hour before the house began to warm up? That is only one of the things you would not find pleasant. I shall certainly have to stop here and tell you about how people lived in old times, and then you can say if you would like to go back to them. Would any boy and girl among you care to live in a little one-story house, made of rough logs laid one on another, and with a roof of thatch--that is, of straw or reeds, or anything that would keep out the rain? Houses, I mean, with only one or two rooms, and some of them with chimneys made of wood, plastered with clay on the inside so that they could not be set on fire. These were the oldest houses. Later on people began to build larger houses, many of which were made of brick or stone. But I am afraid there was not much comfort in the best of them. They had no stoves, and were heated by great stone fireplaces, where big logs of wood were burned. They made a bright and cheerful blaze, it is true, but most of the heat went roaring up the wide chimney, and only a little of it got out into the room. In the winter the people lived in their kitchens, with the blazing wood-fire for heat and light, and at bed-time went shivering off to ice-cold rooms. Do you think you would have enjoyed that? They had very little furniture, and the most of what they had was rude and rough, much of it chopped out of the trees by the farmer's axe. Some of the houses had glass windows--little diamond-shaped panes, set in lead frames--but most of them had nothing but oiled paper, which kept out as much light as it let in. All the cooking was done on the great kitchen hearth, where the pots were hung on iron cranes and the pans set on the blazing coals. They did not have as many kinds of food to cook as we have. Mush and milk, or pork and beans, were their usual food, and their bread was mostly made of rye or cornmeal. The boys and girls who had nice books they wanted to read often had to do so by the light of the kitchen fire; but I can tell you that books were very scarce things in those days.