There were the silk quilts—not usual, as silk was not so easily obtainable as to-day—that were used only on bridal and festive occasions, when kindred and friends from afar were expected, and for whom the “fatted calf” was killed and all the best possessions brought into use. Some of the designs for these were the “Lone Star,” “Small Stars,” “Pickle-dish,” “Hexagon” and “Block” patterns. These were the joy and pride of the thrifty, beauty-loving housewife. For winter wear, the wool or cotton, sometimes mixed, home-dyed and home-woven coverlets, were used; in patterns of the “Rose of Sharon,” the “Walls of Troy” and many now forgotten names and designs. The colors were combinations of red, white, blue or green, with an introducing of black here and there. Flat feather bolsters were used on these beds, the ends of the slips hanging down, and ornamented with eyelet embroidery or netted lace. Nowadays the coverlets are frequently used as portieres, and they are quite artistic and handsome for this purpose. The word tester is of curious origin, coming down to us from the Norman _testere_, a head covering. The English speedily contracted this to “tester,” which name they gave to helmets. Chaucer speaks of “the shieldes brighte, testers and trappures” of the Crusaders, and later the word came to apply to the canopy placed over the bed to support the draperies which protected the sleeper from wandering draughts, so plentiful in those old stone castles. Sir Horace Walpole writes early in the eighteenth century of a visit to a friend’s seat, where he found “no tester to the bed and slept with the saddles and portmanteaus heaped on me to keep off the cold.” Our colonists brought the tester-bed with them, but in this balmy climate they were able to dispense with the curtains; they did not, however, leave off the mountainous feather bed, which necessitated the aid of “a pair of steps” to reach its downy heights. By its side was placed the candle-stand, with its brass candle-stick and snuffers; and in the days “when grandma danced the minuet” with grandpa, brave in satin knee-breeches and buckled shoon, they dreamed of no possibility of rest more hygienic than that obtained on the home-cured goose feathers, with the home-spun sheets, blankets and counterpanes which covered their tester-beds. AUNT JANE’S MOCKING-BIRD By Alma L. Stewart “De sassy little deb’l, if dat jes’ don’t beat anything I eber seed,” Aunt Jane was saying, as she vigorously knocked the well-worn breadtray against the windowsill, if a hole two by four cut in the side of the little log cabin can be said to have a window sill, to dislodge the fragments of dough left from the preparation of the morning meal. After a few more well-intended knocks she dried the tray and hung it and the dishcloth on their own nail back of the small stove, and grasping the corner of her apron she dried her hands and was mopping her face as she turned and saw me in the doorway.