es, sugar-pots, sugar-basins, ere there were
sugar-bowls; spoon-boats and spoon-basins ere there were spoon-holders.
Terrines were imported about 1750. There were pickle-dishes and
pickle-boats, twifflers, mint-stands and vegetable-basins.

One other appurtenance of a dining-room is found in all early
inventories--a voider. Pewter voiders abounded and were advertised in
newspapers, as were wicker and china voiders in 1740. The functions of a
voider were somewhat those of a crumb-tray. They are thus given in Hugh
Rhodes's "Boke of Nurture" in 1577:

"Wyth bones & voyd morsels fyll not thy trenchour, my friend, full
Avoyd them into a Voyder, no man will it anull.
When meate is taken quyte awaye and Voyders in presence
Put you your trenchour in the same and all your resydence.
Take you with your napkin & knyfe the croms that are fore thee
In the Voyder your Napkin leave for it is curtesye."

VI

SUPPLIES OF THE LARDER

There is a tradition of short commons, usually extending even to stories
of starvation, in the accounts of all early settlements in new lands,
and the records of the Pilgrims show no exception to the rule. These
early planters went through a fiery furnace of affliction. The beef and
pork brought with them became tainted, "their butter and cheese
corrupted, their fish rotten." A scarcity of food lasted for three
years, and there was little variety of fare, yet they were cheerful.
Brewster, when he had naught to eat but clams, gave thanks that he was
"permitted to suck of the abundance of the seas and the treasures hid in
the sands." Cotton Mather says that Governor Winthrop, of the Bay
settlement, was giving to a poor neighbor the last meal from his chest,
when it was announced that the food-bearing Lion had arrived. The
General Court thereat changed an appointed Fast Day to a Thanksgiving
Day. By tradition--still commemorated at Forefathers' Dinner--the ration
of Indian corn supplied to each person was at one time but five kernels.

Still there was always plenty of fish--the favorite food of the
English--and Squanto taught the colonists various Indian methods of
catching the "treasures of the sea." With oysters and lobsters they were
far from starvation. Higginson said of the latter shellfish, in 1630,
"the least boy in the Plantation may both catch and eat what he will of
them." He says that lobsters were caught weighing twenty-five pounds
each, and that the abundance