our war for independence, of their bravery in battle, their dignity and wisdom in the council-hall, their patient endurance of every hardship and privation, we must not forget that their ability to meet these demands and to be what they were, was due to the independence of their homes of every outside help in supplying the necessaries of life, and this independence was due solely to the patient industry, the unceasing and voluminous manual labor of our grandmothers from their earliest childhood to their death. Every home farm supplied its own food and drink, medicine, fuel, lighting, clothing, and shelter. The very term “linen” as employed by our ancestors, meant the home-made article, “holland” always signifying that which was imported. Almost every article, in short, of household use and consumption was home-made, and home-made by the women. Women’s hands made all the supplies of soap and candles; they distilled all the medicines from the herbs of the field; they stocked the larder with pies and pickles, jams and jellies and preserves; they brewed the mead and metheglin, and all other household drinks; they churned the butter and made the cheese; they ran bullets, as we very well know in Litchfield, where the leaden statue of George III., torn down from the Bowling Green, New York, and hurried thither, was melted by Litchfield’s patriot women in the back orchard of Oliver Wolcott; and lastly, they spun into thread and yarn the flax and wool that was raised on the farm, and then knitted every pair of stockings and mittens, wove every inch of linen and woolen cloth, and cut and made every stitch of clothing worn by a family which generally numbered ten or a dozen Johns and Hezekiahs and Josiahs and Hepzibahs and Mehitable Anns. No wonder a man could go to the war for his country’s independence, when he left Independence herself at home in the person of his wife. [Illustration: NICY M HOPKINS NO. 10] No properly brought up maiden of those days would think herself prepared to marry until she had collected in her “linen-chest” all the necessaries of housekeeping spun, and often woven, by herself, besides all things necessary to complete her trousseau. Ten pairs of linen sheets at least she must have, and she must “knit a pillow-slip full of stockings” before she could even think of the happy event. Thus the time of a young girl was largely used in spinning her own wedding outfit,—whether rich or poor, it made no difference. The wealthiest spun with the poorest, and you will find the spinning-wheel of both kinds in the musty old inventories of estates of every value, and in the “setting-out” of every bride, whether she left a farmer’s lonely homestead, or the proud colonial mansion of the well-to-do; the millionaire was an unknown species then. [Illustration: FLAX] [Illustration: HETCHEL] Let us now see how much work there was in this spinning, which was only one of those numberless other things our grandmothers had to do.