ope; many families possessed no adequate means, or
very imperfect ones. If by ill fortune the fire in the fireplace became
wholly extinguished through carelessness at night, some one, usually a
small boy, was sent to the house of the nearest neighbor, bearing a
shovel or covered pan, or perhaps a broad strip of green bark, on which
to bring back coals for relighting the fire. Nearly all families had
some form of a flint and steel,--a method of obtaining fire which has
been used from time immemorial by both civilized and uncivilized
nations. This always required a flint, a steel, and a tinder of some
vegetable matter to catch the spark struck by the concussion of flint
and steel. This spark was then blown into a flame. Among the colonists
scorched linen was a favorite tinder to catch the spark of fire; and
till this century all the old cambric handkerchiefs, linen underwear,
and worn sheets of a household were carefully saved for this purpose.
The flint, steel, and tinder were usually kept together in a circular
tinder-box, such as is shown in the accompanying illustration; it was a
shape universal in England and America. This had an inner flat cover
with a ring, a flint, a horseshoe-shaped steel, and an upper lid with a
place to set a candle-end in, to carry the newly acquired light. Though
I have tried hundreds of times with this tinder-box, I have never yet
succeeded in striking a light. The sparks fly, but then the operation
ceases in modern hands. Charles Dickens said if you had good luck, you
could get a light in half an hour. Soon there was an improvement on this
tinder-box, by which sparks were obtained by spinning a steel wheel with
a piece of cord, somewhat like spinning a humming top, and making the
wheel strike a flint fixed in the side of a little trough full of
tinder. This was an infinite advance in convenience on tinder-box No. 1.
This box was called in the South a mill; one is here shown. Then some
person invented strips of wood dipped in sulphur and called "spunks."
These readily caught fire, and retained it, and were handy to carry
light to a candle or pile of chips.

Another way of starting a fire was by flashing a little powder in the
pan of an old-fashioned gun; sometimes this fired a twist of tow, which
in turn started a heap of shavings.

Down to the time of our grandfathers, and in some country homes of our
fathers, lights were started with these crude elements,--flint, steel,
tinder,--and trans