Those were not days of ease and idleness. From sun-up till sun-down, there was work for each and all, indoors and out. “Hired help” was scarce. Some neighbor, not so “well-to-do,” who had more children than income, spared a daughter “to come as one of the family” to work for board, clothes and winter’s schooling till of age. Then, she was paid five dollars a month, and, at her marriage, was given a black silk dress and a feather bed. Country stores were few and far between. Every family made and kept on hand their own supplies, loaning and borrowing in time of need; exchanging spare-ribs, roasts of beef and lamb; arranging their “butchering” in rotation, to accommodate each other. Fresh meat was a luxury, salted meat, the main reliance. In the smokehouse hung hams, shoulders, beef, tongue and sausage. Under these it was my task to pile green hickory chips, pine sawdust and corncobs, which made a smoke of a peculiar, pungent, spicy quality and odor. Tallow candles, the only light in the long evenings, were to be dipped; dozens and dozens, the whole year’s supply. To run out of candles was “shiftless.” A few, partly wax, for the tall silver and brass candlesticks on the mantels in parlor and keeping-room, were run in moulds and hung to bleach. Soap was to be made, hard and soft. An empty soap barrel was thriftless. A cake of scented soap, brought from a distant city, was highly prized. Of spinning and weaving there was no end. The mother and daughters, instead of going to clubs and lectures, after the housework was done had their stents, so many knots of yarn to spin. No need to walk for exercise; back and forth they briskly stepped, as the wheel swiftly whirled, the rolls stretching into miles of yarn, “single twisted” for cloth, “double and twisted” for stockings and carpet warp. Then, the yarn must be scoured and dyed, not with “Diamond Dyes” from the drug store, but with vegetable dyes from fields and woods--white oak roots, butternut bark, chestnut burrs, sumach “bobs,” onion skins, and the wonderful indigo “dye pot blue.” Every good housewife was past master in the art of dyeing, and looked with pride on the line and fence draped with skeins of yarn of bright, unfading hues and shades. Flax wheels, not then strictly ornamental, hummed evenings by the fireside, while deft fingers drew from the flax-covered distaff fine linen thread for sewing, and for sheets, pillow-cases, towels, and all the underclothing of the family. The loom in the garret was never without its web of cloth in process of weaving--wool, linen, or wool and linen mixed (called linsey-woolsey). The linen was spread on the grass, bleached snowy white, then laid away in oaken chests, ready for the wedding “setting out” of the daughters, who made it up by hand, stitching “two threads over, two under,” the rule of the good seamstress.