ds or sheets of paper were placed under the rods to
protect the snowy, scoured floors.

Candles were also run in moulds which were groups of metal cylinders,
usually made of tin or pewter. Itinerant candle-makers went from house
to house, taking charge of candle-making in the household, and carrying
large candle-moulds with them. One of the larger size, making two dozen
candles, is here shown; but its companion, the smaller mould, making six
candles, is such as were more commonly seen. Each wick was attached to a
wire or a nail placed across the open top of the cylinder, and hung down
in the centre of each individual mould. The melted tallow was poured in
carefully around the wicks.

Wax candles also were made. They were often shaped by hand, by pressing
bits of heated wax around a wick. Farmers kept hives of bees as much for
the wax as for the honey, which was of much demand for sweetening, when
"loaves" of sugar were so high-priced. Deer suet, moose fat, bear's
grease, all were saved in frontier settlements, and carefully tried into
tallow for candles. Every particle of grease rescued from pot liquor, or
fat from meat, was utilized for candle-making. Rushlights were made by
stripping part of the outer bark from common rushes, thus leaving the
pith bare, then dipping them in tallow or grease, and letting them
harden.

The precious candles thus tediously made were taken good care of. They
were carefully packed in candle-boxes with compartments; were covered
over, and set in a dark closet, where they would not discolor and turn
yellow. A metal candle-box, hung on the edge of the kitchen
mantel-shelf, always held two or three candles to replenish those which
burnt out in the candlesticks.

A natural, and apparently inexhaustible, material for candles was found
in all the colonies in the waxy berries of the bayberry bush, which
still grows in large quantities on our coasts. In the year 1748 a
Swedish naturalist, Professor Kalm, came to America, and he wrote an
account of the bayberry wax which I will quote in full:--

"There is a plant here from the berries of which they make a kind
of wax or tallow, and for that reason the Swedes call it the
tallow-shrub. The English call the same tree the candle-berry tree
or bayberry bush; it grows abundantly in a wet soil, and seems to
thrive particularly well in the neighborhood of the sea. The
berries look as if flour had been strewed on them. They