age's Headquarters. When the minute-men marched past the house to
Lexington on April 18, 1775, they stripped the lead from the gate-posts.
"King Hooper" angrily denounced them, and a minute-man fired at him as
he entered the house. The bullet passed through the panel of the door,
and the rent may still be seen. Hence the house has been often called
The House of the Front Door with the Bullet-Hole. The present owner and
occupier of the house, Francis Peabody, Esq., has appropriately named it
The Lindens, from the stately linden trees that grace its gardens and
lawns.

In riding through those portions of our states that were the early
settled colonies, it is pleasant to note where any old houses are still
standing, or where the sites of early colonial houses are known, the
good taste usually shown by the colonists in the places chosen to build
their houses. They dearly loved a "sightly location." An old writer
said: "My consayte is such; I had rather not to builde a mansyon or a
house than to builde one without a good prospect in it, to it, and from
it." In Virginia the houses were set on the river slope, where every
passing boat might see them. The New England colonists painfully climbed
long, tedious hills, that they might have homes from whence could be had
a beautiful view, and this was for the double reason, as the old writer
said, that in their new homes they might both see and be seen.

CHAPTER II

THE LIGHT OF OTHER DAYS

The first and most natural way of lighting the houses of the American
colonists, both in the North and South, was by the pine-knots of the fat
pitch-pine, which, of course, were found everywhere in the greatest
plenty in the forests. Governor John Winthrop the younger, in his
communication to the English Royal Society in 1662, said this
candle-wood was much used for domestic illumination in Virginia, New
York, and New England. It was doubtless gathered everywhere in new
settlements, as it has been in pioneer homes till our own day. In Maine,
New Hampshire, and Vermont it was used till this century. In the
Southern states the pine-knots are still burned in humble households for
lighting purposes, and a very good light they furnish.

The historian Wood wrote in 1642, in his _New England's Prospect_:--

"Out of these Pines is gotten the Candlewood that is much spoke of,
which may serve as a shift among poore folks, but I cannot commend
it for singular good, because it dr