students have noted, in olden days the
cold was more piercing, began to nip and pinch earlier in November, and
lingered further into spring; winter rushed upon the settlers with
heavier blasts and fiercer storms than we now have to endure. And, above
all, they felt with sadder force "the dreary monotony of a New England
winter, which leaves so large a blank, so melancholy a death-spot, in
lives so brief that they ought to be all summer-time." Even John Adams
in his day so dreaded the tedious bitter New England winter that he
longed to hibernate like a dormouse from autumn to spring.

As the forests disappeared, sea-coal was brought over in small
quantities, and stoves appeared for town use. By 1695 and 1700 we find
Cotton Mather and Judge Sewall speaking of stoves and stove-rooms, and
of chambers warmed by stoves. Ere that one John Clark had patented an
invention for "saving and warming rooms," but we know nothing definite
of its shape.

Dutch stoves and china stoves were the first to be advertised in New
England papers; then "Philadelphia Fire Stoves"--what we now term
Franklin grates. Wood was burned in these grates. We find clergymen,
until after Revolutionary times, having sixty or eighty cords of
hardwood given to them annually by the parish.

Around the great glowing fireplace in an old New England kitchen centred
all of homeliness and comfort that could be found in a New England home.
The very aspect of the domestic hearth was picturesque, and must have
had a beneficent influence. In earlier days the great lug-pole, or, as
it was called in England, the back-bar, stretched from ledge to ledge,
or lug to lug, high up the yawning chimney, and held a motley collection
of pot-hooks and trammels, of gib-crokes, twicrokes, and hakes, which in
turn suspended at various heights over the fire, pots, and kettles and
other cooking utensils. In the hearth-corners were displayed skillets
and trivets, peels and slices, and on either side were chimney-seats and
settles. Above--on the clavel-piece--were festooned strings of dried
apples, pumpkins, and peppers.

The lug-pole, though made of green wood, sometimes became brittle or
charred by too long use over the fire and careless neglect of
replacement, and broke under its weighty burden of food and metal; hence
accidents became so frequent, to the detriment of precious cooking
utensils, and even to the destruction of human safety and life, that a
Yankee invention of an iron