swift turns for a final twist to the long-drawn thread
of wool or tow. The continuous buzz of the flax wheels, harmonizing with
the spasmodic hum of the big wheel, shows that the girls are preparing a
stock of linen against their wedding day. Less active and more fitful
rattled the quill wheel, where the younger children are filling quills
for the morrow's weaving.

"Craftsmen are still scarce, and the yeoman must depend largely on his
own skill and resources. The grandsire, and the goodman, his son, in
blue woolen frocks, buckskin breeches, long stockings, and clouted
brogans with pewter buckles, and the older boys in shirts of brown tow,
waistcoat and breeches of butternut-colored woolen homespun, surrounded
by piles of white hickory shavings, are whittling out with keen Barlow
jack-knives implements for home use: ox-bows and bow-pins, axe-helves,
rakestales, forkstales, handles for spades and billhooks, wooden
shovels, flail staff and swingle, swingling knives, or pokes and hog
yokes for unruly cattle and swine. The more ingenious, perhaps, are
fashioning buckets or powdering tubs, or weaving skeps, baskets or
snowshoes. Some, it may be, sit astride the wooden shovel, shelling corn
on its iron-shod edge, while others are pounding it into samp or hoiminy
in the great wooden mortar.

"There are no lamps or candles, but the red light from the burning pine
knots on the hearth glows over all, repeating, in fantastic pantomime on
the brown walls and closed shutters, the varied activities around it.
These are occasionally brought into higher relief by the white flashes,
as the boys throw handfuls of hickory shavings onto the forestick, or
punch the back log with the long iron peel, while wishing they had as
'many shillings as sparks go up the chimney.' Then, the smoke-stained
joists and boards of the ceiling with the twisted rings of pumpkin
strings or crimson peppers and festoons of apple, drying on poles hung
beneath; the men's hats, the crook-necked squashes, the skeins of thread
and yarn hanging in bunches on the wainscot; the sheen of the pewter
plates and basins, standing in rows on the shelves of the dresser; the
trusty firelock with powder horn, bandolier, and bullet pouch, hanging
on the summertree, and the bright brass warming-pan behind the bedroom
door--all stand revealed more clearly for an instant, showing the
provident care for the comfort and safety of the household. Dimly seen
in the corners of the room a